.. 


<Ctution 


THE  WORKS  OF 
JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 

ILLUSTRATED    WITH  STEEL  PORTRAITS 
AND  PHOTOGRAVURES 

VOLUME   I 


• 


Mr.  .Lowell  in  1842 


LITERARY  ESSAYS 

AMONG    MY  BOOKS,   MY  STUDY 

WINDOWS,   FIRESIDE 

TRAVELS 


JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL 

IN  FOUR  VOLUMES 
VOLUME  I. 


BOSTON    AND    NEW    YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND   COMPANY 

C£!H-  ilibrrjsi&c  IJtcss,  Cambribjc 


Copyright,  1864, 1871, 1876, 1890, 
BY  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

Copyright,  1892, 
BY  MABEL  LOWELL  BURNETT. 

All  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  V.  S.  A. 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  0.  Houghton  &  Company. 


2,300 


CONTENTS 

A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL 1 

CAMBRIDGE  THIRTY  YEARS  AGO 43 

LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL  IN  ITALY  AND  ELSEWHERE. 

I.   AT  SEA 100 

II.  IN  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 113 

III.  ITALY 120 

IV.  A  FEW  BITS  OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC      .                .189 
KEATS 2ia/ 

.LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 247 

EMERSON  THE  LECTURER  349 


THOREAU 


262514 


PREFATORY  NOTE  TO  THE  ESSAYS 


THE  greater  part  of  the  literary  and  critical 
essays  here  collected  was  originally  written  as 
lectures  for  an  audience  consisting  not  only  of  my 
own  classes  but  also  of  such  other  members  of  the 
University  as  might  choose  to  attend  them.  This 
will  account  for,  if  it  do  not  excuse,  a  more  rhe< 
torical  tone  in  them  here  and  there  than  I  should 
have  allowed  myself  had  I  been  writing  for  the 
eye  and  not  for  the  ear.  They  were  meant  to  be 
suggestive  of  certain  broader  principles  of  criti- 
cism based  on  the  comparative  study  of  literature 
in  its  large  meaning,  rather  than  methodically  ped- 
agogic, to  stimulate  rather  than  to  supply  the  place 
of  individual  study.  This  was  my  deliberate  in- 
tention, but  I  am  sensible  that  it  may  have  been  in 
a  manner  forced  upon  me  by  my  own  limitations ; 
for,  though  capable  of  whatever  drudgery  in  ac- 
quisition, I  am  by  temperament  impatient  of  de- 
tail in  communicating  what  I  have  acquired,  and 
too  often  put  into  a  parenthesis  or  a  note  conclu- 
sions arrived  at  by  long  study  and  reflection  when 
perhaps  it  had  been  wiser  to  expand  them,  not  to 


vi  PREFATORY  NOTE  TO  THE  ESSAYS 
mention  that  much  of  my  illustration  was  extem- 
poraneous and  is  now  lost  to  me.  I  am  apt  also  to 
fancy  that  what  has  long  been  familiar  to  my  own 
mind  must  be  equally  so  to  the  minds  of  others, 
and  this  uncomfortable  suspicion  makes  one  shy  of 
insisting  on  what  may  be  already  only  too  little  in 
need  of  it.  But  Sir  Kenelm  Digby,  in  the  dedi- 
cation of  what  Sir  Thomas  Browne  calls  his  "  ex- 
cellent Treaty  of  Bodies,"  has  said  better  than  I 
could  what  I  wish  to  say.  "  For  besides  what 
faylings  may  be  in  the  matter,  I  cannot  doubt  but 
that  even  in  the  expressions  of  it,  there  must  often 
be  great  obscurity  and  shortnesse ;  which  I,  who 
have  my  thoughts  filled  with  the  things  themselves, 
am  not  aware  of.  So  that,  what  peradventure  may 
seeme  very  full  to  me,  because  every  imperfect 
touch  bringeth  into  my  mind  the  entire  notion  and 
whole  chain  of  circumstances  belonging  to  that 
thing  I  have  so  often  beaten  upon,  may  appeare 
very  crude  and  maymed  to  a  stranger,  that  cannot 
guesse  what  I  would  be  at,  otherwise  than  as  my 
direct  words  do  lead  him." 

Let  me  add  that  in  preparing  these  papers  for 
the  press  I  omitted  much  illustrative  and  subsidi- 
ary matter,  and  this  I  regret  when  it  is  too  late. 
Five  or  six  lectures,  for  instance,  were  condensed 
into  the  essay  on  Rousseau.  The  dates  attached 
were  those  of  publication,  but  the  bulk  of  the  ma- 
terial was  written  many  years  earlier,  some  of  it  so 
long  ago  as  1854.  I  have  refrained  from  modify- 


PREFATORY  NOTE  TO  THE  ESSAYS      vii 

ing  what  was  written  by  one  —  I  know  not  whether 
to  say  so  much  older  or  so  much  younger  than  I  — 
but  at  any  rate  different  in  some  important  re- 
spects, and  this  partly  from  deference  to  him, 

partly  from  distrust  of  myself. 

J.  K.  L. 

25th  April,  1890. 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL  AT  THE  AGE  OF  23.    Photograv- 
ure from  a  crayon  by  William  Page     .     .     .     Frontispiece 

CAMBRIDGE  IN  1824 Charles  Copeland     .     .    54 

ST.  PETER'S 152 

VIEW  OF  ROME,  FROM  THE  PINCIAN  HILL 202 

JOHN  KEATS 240 

RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON 350 

HENRY  D.  THOREAU .362 


LITERARY  ESSAYS 

A  MOOSEHEAD  JOUKNAL 
1853 

ADDRESSED  TO  THE  EDELMANN  STORG  AT  THE  BAGNI  DI 
LUCCA. 

THURSDAY,  11th  August.  —  I  knew  as  little  yes- 
terday of  the  interior  of  Maine  as  the  least  pene- 
trating person  knows  of  the  inside  of  that  great 
social  millstone  which,  driven  by  the  river  Time, 
sets  imperatively  agoing  the  several  wheels  of  our 
individual  activities.  Born  while  Maine  was  still 
a  province  of  native  Massachusetts,  I  was  as  much 
a  foreigner  to  it  as  yourself,  my  dear  Storg.  I  had 
seen  many  lakes,  ranging  from  that  of  Virgil's 
Cumsean  to  that  of  Scott's  Caledonian  Lady  ;  but 
Moosehead,  within  two  days  of  me,  had  never  en- 
joyed the  profit  of  being  mirrored  in  my  retina. 
At  the  sound  of  the  name,  no  reminiscential  atoms 
(according  to  Kenelm  Digby's  Theory  of  Associ- 
ation, —  as  good  as  any)  stirred  and  marshalled 
themselves  in  my  brain.  The  truth  is,  we  think 
lightly  of  Nature's  penny  shows,  and  estimate  what 
we  see  by  the  cost  of  the  ticket.  Empedocles  gave 


2  A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL 

his  life  for  a  pit-entrance  to  2Etna,  and  no  doubt 
found  his  account  in  it.  Accordingly,  the  clean 
face  of  Cousin  Bull  is  imaged  patronizingly  in 
Lake  George,  and  Loch  Lomond  glasses  the  hur- 
ried countenance  of  Jonathan,  diving  deeper  in  the 
streams  of  European  association  (and  coming  up 
drier)  than  any  other  man.  Or  is  the  cause  of  our 
not  caring  to  see  what  is  equally  within  the  reach 
of  all  our  neighbors  to  be  sought  in  that  aristo- 
cratic principle  so  deeply  implanted  in  human 
nature  ?  I  knew  a  pauper  graduate  who  always 
borrowed  a  black  coat,  and  came  to  eat  the  Com- 
mencement dinner,  —  not  that  it  was  better  than 
the  one  which  daily  graced  the  board  of  the  pub- 
lic institution  in  which  he  hibernated  (so  to  speak) 
during  the  other  three  hundred  and  sixty-four 
days  of  the  year,  save  in  this  one  particular,  that 
none  of  his  eleemosynary  fellow-commoners  could 
eat  it.  If  there  are  unhappy  men  who  wish  that 
they  were  as  the  Babe  Unborn,  there  are  more  who 
would  aspire  to  the  lonely  distinction  of  being  that 
other  figurative  personage,  the  Oldest  Inhabitant. 
You  remember  the  charming  irresolution  of  our 
dear  Esthwaite,  (like  Macheath  between  his  two 
doxies,)  divided  between  his  theory  that  he  is  un- 
der thirty,  and  his  pride  at  being  the  only  one  of 
us  who  witnessed  the  September  gale  and  the  re- 
joicings at  the  Peace  ?  Nineteen  years  ago  I  was 
walking  through  the  Franconia  Notch,  and  stopped 
to  chat  with  a  hermit,  who  fed  with  gradual  logs  the 
unwearied  teeth  of  a  saw-mill.  As  the  strident  steel 
slit  off  the  slabs  of  the  log,  so  did  the  less  willing 


A    MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL  3 

machine  of  talk,  acquiring  a  steadier  up-and-down 
motion,  pare  away  that  outward  bark  of  conversa- 
tion which  protects  the  core,  and  which,  like  other 
bark,  has  naturally  most  to  do  with  the  weather, 
the  season,  and  the  heat  of  the  day.  At  length  I 
asked  him  the  best  point  of  view  for  the  Old  Man 
of  the  Mountain. 

"  Dunno,  —  never  see  it." 

Too  young  and  too  happy  either  to  feel  or  affect 
the  Horatian  indifference,  I  was  sincerely  aston- 
ished, and  I  expressed  it. 

The  log-compelling  man  attempted  no  justifi- 
cation, but  after  a  little  asked,  "Come  from 
Baws'n?" 

"  Yes  "  (with  peninsular  pride). 

"  Goodie  to  see  in  the  vycinity  o'  Baws'n." 

"  Oh,  yes  !  "  I  said ;  and  I  thought,  —  see  Bos- 
ton and  die !  see  the  State-Houses,  old  and  new, 
the  caterpillar  wooden  bridges  crawling  with  innu- 
merable legs  across  the  flats  of  Charles ;  see  the 
Common,  —  largest  park,  doubtless,  in  the  world, 
—  with  its  files  of  trees  planted  as  if  by  a  drill- 
sergeant,  and  then  for  your  nunc  dimittis  ! 

"  I  should  like,  'awl,  I  should  like  to  stan'  on 
Bunker  Hill.  You  've  ben  there  offen,  likely  ?  " 

"  N-o-o,"  unwillingly,  seeing  the  little  end  of 
the  horn  in  clear  vision  at  the  terminus  of  this 
Socratic  perspective. 

"'Awl,  my  young  frien',  you've  lamed  neow 
thet  wut  a  man  kin  see  any  day  for  nawthin',  chil- 
dern  half  price,  he  never  doos  see.  Nawthin'  pay, 
nawthin'  vally." 


4  A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL 

With  this  modern  instance  of  a  wise  saw,  I  de- 
parted, deeply  revolving  these  things  with  myself, 
and  convinced  that,  whatever  the  ratio  of  popula- 
tion, the  average  amount  of  human  nature  to  the 
square  mile  differs  little  the  world  over.  I  thought 
of  it  when  I  saw  people  upon  the  Pincian  wonder- 
ing at  the  alchemist  sun,  as  if  he  never  burned 
the  leaden  clouds  to  gold  in  sight  of  Charles 
Street.  I  thought  of  it  when  I  found  eyes  first 
discovering  at  Mont  Blanc  how  beautiful  snow  was. 
As  I  walked  on,  I  said  to  myself,  There  is  one 
exception,  wise  hermit,  —  it  is  just  these  gratis 
pictures  which  the  poet  puts  in  his  show-box,  and 
which  we  all  gladly  pay  Wordsworth  and  the  rest 
for  a  peep  at.  The  divine  faculty  is  to  see  what 
everybody  can  look  at. 

While  every  well-informed  man  in  Europe,  from 
the  barber  down  to  the  diplomatist,  has  his  view  of 
the  Eastern  Question,  why  should  I  not  go  person- 
ally down  East  and  see  for  myself?  Why  not, 
like  Tancred,  attempt  my  own  solution  of  the 
Mystery  of  the  Orient,  —  doubly  mysterious  when 
you  begin  the  two  words  with  capitals?  You  know 
my  way  of  doing  things,  to  let  them  simmer  in  my 
mind  gently  for  months,  and  at  last  do  them  im- 
promptu in  a  kind  of  desperation,  driven  by  the 
Eumenides  of  unfulfilled  purpose.  So,  after  talk- 
ing about  Moosehead  till  nobody  believed  me  capa- 
ble of  going  thither,  I  found  myself  at  the  Eastern 
Kailway  station.  The  only  event  of  the  journey 
hither  (I  am  now  at  Waterville)  was  a  boy  hawk- 
ing exhilaratingly  the  last  great  railroad  smash,  — 


A    MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL  5 

thirteen  lives  lost,  —  and  no  doubt  devoutly  wish- 
ing there  had  been  fifty.  This  having  a  mercantile 
interest  in  horrors,  holding  stock,  as  it  were,  in 
murder,  misfortune,  and  pestilence,  must  have  an 
odd  effect  on  the  human  mind.  The  birds  of  ill- 
omen,  at  whose  sombre  flight  the  rest  of  the  world 
turn  pale,  are  the  ravens  which  bring  food  to  this 
little  outcast  in  the  wilderness.  If  this  lad  give 
thanks  for  daily  bread,  it  would  be  curious  to 
inquire  what  that  phrase  represents  to  his  under- 
standing. If  there  ever  be  a  plum  in  it,  it  is  Sin 
or  Death  that  puts  it  in.  Other  details  of  my 
dreadful  ride  I  will  spare  you.  Suffice  it  that  I 
arrived  here  in  safety,  —  in  complexion  like  an 
Ethiopian  serenader  half  got-up,  and  so  broiled 
and  peppered  that  I  was  more  like  a  devilled  kid- 
ney than  anything  else  I  can  think  of. 

10  P.  M.  —  The  civil  landlord  and  neat  chamber 
at  the  "  Elm  wood  House  "  were  very  grateful,  and 
after  tea  I  set  forth  to  explore  the  town.  It  has 
a  good  chance  of  being  pretty:  but,  like  most 
American  towns,  it  is  in  a  hobbledehoy  age,  grow- 
ing yet,  and  one  cannot  tell  what  may  happen.  A 
child  with  great  promise  of  beauty  is  often  spoiled 
by  its  second  teeth.  There  is  something  agreeable 
in  the  sense  of  completeness  which  a  walled  town 
gives  one.  It  is  entire,  like  a  crystal,  —  a  work 
which  man  has  succeeded  in  finishing.  I  think 
the  human  mind  pines  more  or  less  where  every- 
thing is  new,  and  is  better  for  a  diet  of  stale  bread. 
The  number  of  Americans  who  visit  the  Old  W^orld, 
and  the  deep  inspirations  with  which  they  breathe 


6  A   MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL 

the  air  of  antiquity,  as  if  their  mental  lungs  had 
been  starved  with  too  thin  an  atmosphere,  is  be- 
ginning to  afford  matter  of  speculation  to  obser- 
vant Europeans.  For  my  own  part,  I  never  saw  a 
house  which  I  thought  old  enough  to  be  torn  down. 
It  is  too  like  that  Scythian  fashion  of  knocking  old 
people  on  the  head.  I  cannot  help  thinking  that 
the  indefinable  something  which  we  call  character 
is  cumulative,  —  that  the  influence  of  the  same 
climate,  scenery,  and  associations  for  several  gen- 
erations is  necessary  to  its  gathering  head,  and  that 
the  process  is  disturbed  by  continual  change  of 
place.  The  American  is  nomadic  in  religion,  in 
ideas,  in  morals,  and  leaves  his  faith  and  opinions 
with  as  much  indifference  as  the  house  in  which  he 
was  born.  However,  we  need  not  bother  :  Nature 
takes  care  not  to  leave  out  of  the  great  heart  of 
society  either  of  its  two  ventricles  of  hold-back  and 


It  seems  as  if  every  considerable  American  town 
must  have  its  one  specimen  of  everything,  and  so 
there  is  a  college  in  Waterville,  the  buildings  of 
which  are  three  in  number,  of  brick,  and  quite  up 
to  the  average  ugliness  which  seems  essential  in 
edifices  of  this  description.  Unhappily,  they  do 
not  reach  that  extreme  of  ugliness  where  it  and 
beauty  come  together  in  the  clasp  of  fascination. 
We  erect  handsomer  factories  for  cottons,  woollens, 
and  steam-engines,  than  for  doctors,  lawyers,  and 
parsons.  The  truth  is,  that,  till  our  struggle  with 
nature  is  over,  till  this  shaggy  hemisphere  is  tamed 
and  subjugated,  the  workshop  will  be  the  college 


A   MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL  7 

whose  degrees  will  be  most  valued.  Moreover, 
steam  has  made  travel  so  easy  that  the  great  uni- 
versity of  the  world  is  open  to  all  comers,  and  the 
old  cloister  system  is  falling  astern.  Perhaps  it  is 
only  the  more  needed,  and,  were  I  rich,  I  should 
like  to  found  a  few  lazyships  in  my  Alma  Mater  as 
a  kind  of  counterpoise.  The  Anglo-Saxon  race 
has  accepted  the  primal  curse  as  a  blessing,  has 
deified  work,  and  would  not  have  thanked  Adam 
for  abstaining  from  the  apple.  They  would  have 
dammed  the  four  rivers  of  Paradise,  substituted 
cotton  for  fig-leaves  among  the  antediluvian  popu- 
lations, and  commended  man's  first  disobedience  as 
a  wise  measure  of  political  economy.  But  to  re- 
turn to  our  college.  We  cannot  have  fine  buildings 
till  we  are  less  in  a  hurry.  We  snatch  an  educa- 
tion like  a  meal  at  a  railroad-station.  Just  in  time 
to  make  us  dyspeptic,  the  whistle  shrieks,  and  we 
must  rush,  or  lose  our  places  in  the  great  train  of 
life.  Yet  noble  architecture  is  one  element  of 
patriotism,  and  an  eminent  one  of  culture,  the  finer 
portions  of  which  are  taken  in  by  unconscious  ab- 
sorption through  the  pores  of  the  mind  from  the 
surrounding  atmosphere.  I  suppose  we  must  wait, 
for  we  are  a  great  bivouac  as  yet,  rather  than  a  na- 
tion on  the  march  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific, 
and  pitch  tents  instead  of  building  houses.  Our 
very  villages  seem  to  be  in  motion,  following  west- 
ward the  bewitching  music  of  some  Pied  Piper  of 
Hamelin.  We  still  feel  the  great  push  toward 
sundown  given  to  the  peoples  somewhere  in  the 
gray  dawn  of  history.  The  cliff-swallow  alone  of 
all  animated  nature  emigrates  eastward. 


8  A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL 

Friday,  12th.  —  The  coach  leaves  Waterville  at 
five  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  one  must  break- 
fast in  the  dark  at  a  quarter  past  four,  because  a 
train  starts  at  twenty  minutes  before  five,  —  the 
passengers  by  both  conveyances  being  pastured 
gregariously.  So  one  must  be  up  at  half  past 
three.  The  primary  geological  formations  contain 
no  trace  of  man,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  these 
eocene  periods  of  the  day  are  not  fitted  for  sustain- 
ing the  human  forms  of  life.  One  of  the  Fathers 
held  that  the  sun  was  created  to  be  worshipped  at 
his  rising  by  the  Gentiles.  The  more  reason  that 
Christians  (except,  perhaps,  early  Christians)  should 
abstain  from  these  heathenish  ceremonials.  As  one 
arriving  by  an  early  train  is  welcomed  by  a  drowsy 
maid  with  the  sleep  scarce  brushed  out  of  her  hair, 
and  finds  empty  grates  and  polished  mahogany,  on 
whose  arid  plains  the  pioneers  of  breakfast  have 
not  yet  encamped,  so  a  person  waked  thus  unsea- 
sonably is  sent  into  the  world  before  his  faculties 
are  up  and  dressed  to  serve  him.  It  might  have 
been  for  this  reason  that  my  stomach  resented  for 
several  hours  a  piece  of  fried  beefsteak  which  I 
forced  upon  it,  or,  more  properly  speaking,  a  piece 
of  that  leathern  conveniency  which  in  these  regions 
assumes  the  name.  You  will  find  it  as  hard  to 
believe,  my  dear  Storg,  as  that  quarrel  of  the 
Sorbonists,  whether  one  should  say  ego  amat  or 
no,  that  the  use  of  the  gridiron  is  unknown  here- 
about, and  so  near  a  river  named  after  St.  Law- 
rence, too ! 

To-day  has  been  the  hottest  day  of  the  season, 


A    MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL  9 

yet  our  drive  has  not  been  unpleasant.  For  a  con- 
siderable distance  we  followed  the  course  of  the 
Sebasticook  River,  a  pretty  stream  with  alterna- 
tions of  dark  brown  pools  and  wine-colored  rapids. 
On  each  side  of  the  road  the  land  had  been  cleared, 
and  little  one-story  farm-houses  were  scattered  at 
intervals.  But  the  stumps  still  held  out  in  most  of 
the  fields,  and  the  tangled  wilderness  closed  in  be- 
hind, striped  here  and  there  with  the  slim  white 
trunks  of  the  elm.  As  yet  only  the  edges  of  the 
great  forest  have  been  nibbled  away.  Sometimes 
a  root-fence  stretched  up  its  bleaching  antlers,  like 
the  trophies  of  a  giant  hunter.  Now  and  then  the 
houses  thickened  into  an  unsocial-looking  village, 
and  we  drove  up  to  the  grocery  to  leave  and  take  a 
mail-bag,  stopping  again  presently  to  water  the 
horses  at  some  pallid  little  tavern,  whose  one  red- 
curtained  eye  (the  bar-room)  had  been  put  out  by 
the  inexorable  thrust  of  Maine  Law.  Had  Shen- 
stone  travelled  this  road,  he  would  never  have  writ- 
ten that  famous  stanza  of  his ;  had  Johnson,  he 
would  never  have  quoted  it.  They  are  to  real  inns 
as  the  skull  of  Yorick  to  his  face.  Where  these 
villages  occurred  at  a  distance  from  the  river,  it 
was  difficult  to  account  for  them.  On  the  river- 
bank,  a  saw-mill  or  a  tannery  served  as  a  logical 
premise,  and  saved  them  from  total  inconsequen- 
tiality.  As  we  trailed  along,  at  the  rate  of  about 
four  miles  an  hour,  it  was  discovered  that  one  of 
our  mail-bags  was  missing.  "  Guess  somebody  '11 
pick  it  up,"  said  the  driver  coolly;  "'t  any  rate, 
likely  there's  nothin'  in  it."  Who  knows  how 


10  A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL 

long  it  took  some  Elam  D.  or  Zebulon  K.  to  com- 
pose the  missive  intrusted  to  that  vagrant  bag,  and 
how  much  longer  to  persuade  Pamela  Grace  or 
Sophronia  Melissa  that  it  had  really  and  truly  been 
written  ?  The  discovery  of  our  loss  was  made  by 
a  tall  man  who  sat  next  to  me  on  the  top  of  the 
coach,  every  one  of  whose  senses  seemed  to  be 
prosecuting  its  several  investigation  as  we  went 
along.  Presently,  sniffing  gently,  he  remarked : 
"  'Pears  to  me  's  though  I  smelt  sunthin'.  Ain't 
the  aix  het,  think  ?  "  The  driver  pulled  up,  and, 
sure  enough,  the  off  fore-wheel  was  found  to  be 
smoking.  In  three  minutes  he  had  snatched  a  rail 
from  the  fence,  made  a  lever,  raised  the  coach,  and 
taken  off  the  wheel,  bathing  the  hot  axle  and  box 
with  water  from  the  river.  It  was  a  pretty  spot, 
and  I  was  not  sorry  to  lie  under  a  beech-tree 
(Tityrus-like,  meditating  over  my  pipe)  and  watch 
the  operations  of  the  fire-annihilator.  I  could  not 
help  contrasting  the  ready  helpfulness  of  our  driver, 
all  of  whose  wits  were  about  him,  current,  and 
redeemable  in  the  specie  of  action  on  emergency, 
with  an  incident  of  travel  in  Italy,  where,  under 
a  somewhat  similar  stress  of  circumstances,  our 
vetturino  had  nothing  for  it  but  to  dash  his  hat  on 
the  ground  and  call  on  Sant'  Antonio,  the  Italian 
Hercules. 

There  being  four  passengers  for  the  Lake,  a 
vehicle  called  a  mud-wagon  was  detailed  at  New- 
port for  our  accommodation.  In  this  we  jolted  and 
rattled  along  at  a  livelier  pace  than  in  the  coach. 
As  we  got  farther  north,  the  country  (especially 


A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL  11 

the  hills)  gave  evidence  of  longer  cultivation. 
About  the  thriving  town  of  Dexter  we  saw  fine 
farms  and  crops.  The  houses,  too,  became  pret- 
tier ;  hop-vines  were  trained  about  the  doors,  and 
hung  their  clustering  thyrsi  over  the  open  win- 
dows. A  kind  of  wild  rose  (called  by  the  country 
folk  the  primrose)  and  asters  were  planted  about 
the  door-yards,  and  orchards,  commonly  of  natural 
fruit,  added  to  the  pleasant  home-look.  But  every- 
where we  could  see  that  the  war  between  the  white 
man  and  the  forest  was  still  fierce,  and  that  it 
would  be  a  long  while  yet  before  the  axe  was 
buried.  The  haying  being  over,  fires  blazed  or 
smouldered  against  the  stumps  in  the  fields,  and 
the  blue  smoke  widened  slowly  upward  through  the 
quiet  August  atmosphere.  It  seemed  to  me  that  I 
could  hear  a  sigh  now  and  then  from  the  imme- 
morial pines,  as  they  stood  watching  these  camp- 
fires  of  the  inexorable  invader.  Evening  set  in, 
and,  as  we  crunched  and  crawled  up  the  long 
gravelly  hills,  I  sometimes  began  to  fancy  that 
Nature  had  forgotten  to  make  the  corresponding 
descent  on  the  other  side.  But  erelong  we  were 
rushing  down  at  full  speed ;  and,  inspired  by  the 
dactylic  beat  of  the  horses'  hoofs,  I  essayed  to  re- 
peat the  opening  lines  of  Evangeline.  At  the  mo- 
ment I  was  beginning,  we  plunged  into  a  hollow, 
where  the  soft  clay  had  been  overcome  by  a  road  of 
unhewn  logs.  I  got  through  one  line  to  this  cor- 
duroy accompaniment,  somewhat  as  a  country  choir 
stretches  a  short  metre  on  the  Procrustean  rack  of 
a  long-drawn  tune.  The  result  was  like  this :  — 


12  A   MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL 

"  Thihia  ihis  thehe  fohorest  prihihimeheval ;  thehe  murhurmuring 
pihines  hahand  thehe  hehemlohocks !  " 

At  a  quarter  past  eleven,  P.  M.,  we  reached 
Greenville,  (a  little  village  which  looks  as  if  it  had 
dripped  down  from  the  hills,  and  settled  in  the  hol- 
low at  the  foot  of  the  lake,)  having  accomplished 
seventy-two  miles  in  eighteen  hours.  The  tavern 
was  totally  extinguished.  The  driver  rapped  upon 
the  bar-room  window,  and  after  a  while  we  saw 
heat-lightnings  of  unsuccessful  matches  followed  by 
a  low  grumble  of  vocal  thunder,  which  I  am  afraid 
took  the  form  of  imprecation.  Presently  there  was 
a  great  success,  and  the  steady  blur  of  lighted  tal- 
low succeeded  the  fugitive  brilliance  of  the  pine. 
A  hostler  fumbled  the  door  open,  and  stood  staring 
at  but  not  seeing  us,  with  the  sleep  sticking  out  all 
over  him.  We  at  last  contrived  to  launch  him, 
more  like  an  insensible  missile  than  an  intelligent 
or  intelligible  being,  at  the  slumbering  landlord, 
who  came  out  wide-awake,  and  welcomed  us  as  so 
many  half-dollars,  —  twenty-five  cents  each  for  bed, 
ditto  breakfast.  O  Shenstone,  Shenstone !  The 
only  roost  was  in  the  garret,  which  had  been  made 
into  a  single  room,  and  contained  eleven  double- 
beds,  ranged  along  the  walls.  It  was  like  sleeping 
in  a  hospital.  However,  nice  customs  curtsy  to 
eighteen-hour  rides,  and  we  slept. 

Saturday,  13th.  —  This  morning  I  performed 
my  toilet  in  the  bar-room,  where  there  was  an 
abundant  supply  of  water,  and  a  halo  of  interested 
spectators.  After  a  sufficient  breakfast,  we  em- 
barked on  the  little  steamer  Moosehead,  and  were 


A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL  13 

soon  throbbing  up  the  lake.  The  boat,  it  appeared, 
had  been  chartered  by  a  party,  this  not  being  one 
of  her  regular  trips.  Accordingly  we  were  mulcted 
in  twice  the  usual  fee,  the  philosophy  of  which  I 
could  not  understand.  However,  it  always  comes 
easier  to  us  to  comprehend  why  we  receive  than 
why  we  pay.  I  dare  say  it  was  quite  clear  to  the 
captain.  There  were  three  or  four  clearings  on  the 
western  shore  ;  but  after  passing  these,  the  lake 
became  wholly  primeval,  and  looked  to  us  as  it  did 
to  the  first  adventurous  Frenchman  who  paddled 
across  it.  Sometimes  a  cleared  point  would  be  pink 
with  the  blossoming  willow-herb,  "  a  cheap  and 
excellent  substitute  "  for  heather,  and,  like  all  such, 
not  quite  so  good  as  the  real  thing.  On  all  sides 
rose  deep-blue  mountains,  of  remarkably  graceful 
outline,  and  more  fortunate  than  common  in  their 
names.  There  were  the  Big  and  Little  Squaw, 
the  Spencer  and  Lily-bay  Mountains.  It  was  de- 
bated whether  we  saw  Katahdin  or  not,  (perhaps 
more  useful  as  an  intellectual  exercise  than  the 
assured  vision  would  have  been),  and  presently 
Mount  Kineo  rose  abruptly  before  us,  in  shape 
not  unlike  the  island  of  Capri.  Mountains  are 
called  great  natural  features,  and  why  they  should 
not  retain  their  names  long  enough  for  these  also  to 
become  naturalized,  it  is  hard  to  say.  Why  should 
every  new  surveyor  rechristen  them  with  the  guber- 
natorial patronymics  of  the  current  year  ?  They 
are  geological  noses,  and  as  they  are  aquiline  or 
pug,  indicate  terrestrial  idiosyncrasies.  A  cos- 
mical  physiognomist,  after  a  glance  at  them,  will 


14  A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL 

draw  no  vague  inference  as  to  the  character  of  the 
country.  The  word  nose  is  no  better  than  any 
other  word  ;  but  since  the  organ  has  got  that  name, 
it  is  convenient  to  keep  it.  Suppose  we  had  to 
label  our  facial  prominences  every  season  with  the 
name  of  our  provincial  governor,  how  should  we 
like  it  ?  If  the  old  names  have  no  other  meaning, 
they  have  that  of  age  ;  and,  after  all,  meaning  is 
a  plant  of  slow  growth,  as  every  reader  of  Shake- 
speare knows.  It  is  well  enough  to  call  mountains 
after  their  discoverers,  for  Nature  has  a  knack  of 
throwing  doublets,  and  somehow  contrives  it  that 
discoverers  have  good  names.  Pike's  Peak  is  a  cu- 
rious hit  in  this  way.  But  these  surveyors'  names 
have  no  natural  stick  in  them.  They  remind  one 
of  the  epithets  of  poetasters,  which  peel  off  like  a 
badly  gummed  postage-stamp.  The  early  settlers 
did  better,  and  there  is  something  pleasant  in  the 
sound  of  Graylock,  Saddleback,  and  Great  Hay- 
stack. 

"  I  love  those  names 
Wherewith  the  exiled  farmer  tames 
Nature  down  to  companionship 

With  his  old  world's  more  homely  mood, 
And  strives  the  shaggy  wild  to  clip 

In  the  arms  of  familiar  habitude." 

It  is  possible  that  Mount  Marcy  and  Mount 
Hitchcock  may  sound  as  well  hereafter  as  Helles- 
pont and  Peloponnesus,  when  the  heroes,  their 
namesakes,  have  become  mythic  with  antiquity. 
But  that  is  to  look  forward  a  great  way.  I  am  no 
fanatic  for  Indian  nomenclature,  —  the  name  of 
my  native  district  having  been  Pigsgusset,  —  but 
let  us  at  least  agree  on  names  for  ten  years. 


A  MOOSE  HEAD  JOURNAL  15 

There  were  a  couple  of  loggers  on  board,  in  red 
flannel  shirts,  and  with  rifles.  They  were  the  first 
I  had  seen,  and  I  was  interested  in  their  appear- 
ance. They  were  tall,  well-knit  men,  straight  as 
Robin  Hood,  and  with  a  quiet,  self-contained  look 
that  pleased  me.  I  fell  into  talk  with  one  of 
them. 

"  Is  there  a  good  market  for  the  farmers  here  in 
the  woods  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  None  better.  They  can  sell  what  they  raise  at 
their  doors,  and  for  the  best  of  prices.  The  lum- 
berers want  it  all,  and  more." 

"  It  must  be  a  lonely  life.  But  then  we  all  have 
to  pay  more  or  less  life  for  a  living." 

"  Well,  it  is  lonesome.  Should  n't  like  it. 
After  all,  the  best  crop  a  man  can  raise  is  a  good 
crop  of  society.  We  don't  live  none  too  long,  any- 
how ;  and  without  society  a  fellow  could  n't  tell 
more  'n  half  the  time  whether  he  was  alive  or  not." 

This  speech  gave  me  a  glimpse  into  the  life  of 
the  lumberers'  camp.  It  was  plain  that  there  a 
man  would  soon  find  out  how  much  alive  he  was, 
—  there  he  could  learn  to  estimate  his  quality, 
weighed  in  the  nicest  self-adjusting  balance.  The 
best  arm  at  the  axe  or  the  paddle,  the  surest  eye 
for  a  road  or  for  the  weak  point  of  a  jam,  the 
steadiest  foot  upon  the  squirming  log,  the  most 
persuasive  voice  to  the  tugging  oxen,  —  all  these 
things  are  rapidly  settled,  and  so  an  aristocracy  is 
evolved  from  this  democracy  of  the  woods,  for  good 
old  mother  Nature  speaks  Saxon  still,  and  with 
her  either  Canning  or  Kenning  means  King. 


16  A   MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL 

A  string  of  five  loons  was  flying  back  and  forth 
in  long,  irregular  zigzags,  uttering  at  intervals 
their  wild,  tremulous  cry,  which  always  seems  far 
away,  like  the  last  faint  pulse  of  echo  dying  among 
the  hills,  and  which  is  one  of  those  few  sounds 
that,  instead  of  disturbing  solitude,  only  deepen 
and  confirm  it.  On  our  inland  ponds  they  are 
usually  seen  in  pairs,  and  I  asked  if  it  were  com- 
mon to  meet  five  together.  My  question  was  an- 
swered by  a  queer-looking  old  man,  chiefly  remark- 
able for  a  pair  of  enormous  cowhide  boots,  over 
which  large  blue  trousers  of  f  rocking  strove  in  vain 
to  crowd  themselves. 

"  Wahl,  't ain't  ushil,"  said  he,  "and  it's  called 
a  sign  o'  rain  comin',  that  is." 

"  Do  you  think  it  will  rain  ?  " 

With  the  caution  of  a  veteran  auspex,  he  evaded 
a  direct  reply.  "  Wahl,  they  du  say  it 's  a  sign  o' 
rain  comin',"  said  he. 

I  discovered  afterward  that  my  interlocutor  was 
Uncle  Zeb.  Formerly,  every  New  England  town 
had  its  representative  uncle.  He  was  not  a  pawn- 
broker, but  some  elderly  man  who,  for  want  of  more 
defined  family  ties,  had  gradually  assumed  this 
avuncular  relation  to  the  community,  inhabiting  the 
border-land  between  respectability  and  the  alms- 
house,  with  no  regular  calling,  but  ready  for  odd 
jobs  at  haying,  wood-sawing,  whitewashing,  associ- 
ated with  the  demise  of  pigs  and  the  ailments  of 
cattle,  and  possessing  as  much  patriotism  as  might 
be  implied  in  a  devoted  attachment  to  "  New  Eng- 
land"—with  a  good  deal  of  sugar  and  very  little 


A    MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL  17 

water  in  it.    Uncle  Zeb  was  a  good  specimen  of  this 
palaeozoic  class,  extinct  among  us  for  the  most  part, 
or  surviving,  like  the  Dodo,  in  the  Botany  Bays  of 
society.     He  was  ready  to  contribute   (somewhat 
muddily)  to  all  general  conversation ;  but  his  chief 
topics  were  his  boots  and  the  'Roostick  war.    Upon 
the  lowlands  and   levels   of   ordinary  palaver  ho 
would  make   rapid    and   unlooked-for   incursions ; 
but,  provision  failing,  he  would  retreat  to  these 
two  fastnesses,  whence  it  was  impossible  to  dislodge 
him,  and  to  which  he  knew  innumerable  passes 
and  short  cuts  quite  beyond  the  conjecture  of  com- 
mon  woodcraft.      His   mind  opened  naturally  to 
these  two  subjects,  like  a  book  to  some  favorite 
passage.     As  the  ear  accustoms  itself  to  any  sound 
recurring  regularly,  such  as  the  ticking  of  a  clock, 
and,  without  a  conscious  effort  of  attention,  takes 
no  impression  from  it  whatever,  so  does  the  mind 
find  a  natural   safeguard   against  this  pendulum 
species  of  discourse,  and  performs  its  duties  in  the 
parliament  by  an  unconscious  reflex  action,  like 
the  beating  of  the  heart  or  the  movement  of  the 
lungs.     If  talk  seemed  to  be  flagging,  our  Uncle 
would  put  the  heel  of  one  boot  upon  the  toe  of  the 
other,  to    bring  it  within  point-blank  range,  and 
say,  "  Wahl,  I  stump  the  Devil  himself  to  make 
that  'ere  boot  hurt  my  foot,"  leaving  us  in  doubt 
whether  it  were  the  virtue  of  the  foot  or  its  case 
which  set  at  naught  the  wiles  of  the  adversary ;  or, 
looking  up  suddenly,  he  would  exclaim,  "Wahl, 
we  eat  some  beans  to   the  'Roostick  war,  I  tell 
you  I "     When  his  poor  old  clay  was  wet  with  gin, 


18  A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL 

his  thoughts  and  words  acquired  a  rank  flavor  from 
it,  as  from  too  strong  a  fertilizer.  At  such  times, 
too,  his  fancy  commonly  reverted  to  a  prehistoric 
period  of  his  life,  when  he  singly  had  settled  all 
the  surrounding  country,  subdued  the  Injuns  and 
other  wild  animals,  and  named  all  the  towns. 

We  talked  of  the  winter-camps  and  the  life 
there.  "  The  best  thing  is,"  said  our  Uncle,  "  to 
hear  a  log  squeal  thru  the  snow.  Git  a  good,  col', 
frosty  mornin',  in  Febuary  say,  an'  take  an'  hitch 
the  critters  on  to  a  log  that  '11  scale  seven  thousan', 
an'  it  '11  squeal  as  pooty  as  an'thin'  you  ever  hearn, 
I  tell  you" 

A  pause. 

"Lessee,  — seen  Cal  Hutchins  lately?" 

"No." 

"  Seems  to  me 's  though  I  hed  n't  seen  Cal  sence 
the  'Roostick  war.  Wahl,"  &c.,  &c. 

Another  pause. 

"  To  look  at  them  boots  you  'd  think  they  was 
too  large ;  but  kind  o'  git  your  foot  into  'em,  and 
they  're  as  easy  's  a  glove."  (I  observed  that  he 
never  seemed  really  to  get  his  foot  in,  —  there  was 
always  a  qualifying  kind  o'.)  "  Wahl,  my  foot 
can  play  in  'em  like  a  young  hedgehog." 

By  this  time  we  had  arrived  at  Kineo,  —  a  flour- 
ishing village  of  one  house,  the  tavern  kept  by 
'Squire  Barrows.  The  'Squire  is  a  large,  hearty 
man,  with  a  voice  as  clear  and  strong  as  a  north- 
west wind,  and  a  great  laugh  suitable  to  it.  His 
table  is  neat  and  well  supplied,  and  he  waits  upon 
it  himself  in  the  good  old  landlordly  fashion.  One 


A   MOO  SERE  AD  JOURNAL  19 

may  be  much  better  off  here,  to  my  thinking,  than 
in  one  of  those  gigantic  Columbaria  which  are 
foisted  upon  us  patient  Americans  for  hotels,  and 
where  one  is  packed  away  in  a  pigeon-hole  so  near 
the  heavens  that,  if  the  comet  should  flirt  its  tail, 
(no  unlikely  thing  in  the  month  of  flies,)  one  would 
run  some  risk  of  being  brushed  away.  Here  one 
does  not  pay  his  diurnal  three  dollars  for  an  undi- 
vided five-hundredth  part  of  the  pleasure  of  look- 
ing at  gilt  gingerbread.  Here  one's  relations  are 
with  the  monarch  himself,  and  one  is  not  obliged  to 
wait  the  slow  leisure  of  those  "  attentive  clerks  " 
whose  praises  are  sung  by  thankful  deadheads,  and 
to  whom  the  slave  who  pays  may  feel  as  much 
gratitude  as  might  thrill  the  heart  of  a  brown-paper 
parcel  toward  the  express-man  who  labels  it  and 
chucks  it  under  his  counter. 

Sunday,  14*$..  —  The  loons  were  right.  About 
midnight  it  began  to  rain  in  earnest,  and  did  not 
hold  up  till  about  ten  o'clock  this  morning.  "  This 
is  a  Maine  dew,"  said  a  shaggy  woodman  cheerily, 
as  he  shook  the  water  out  of  his  wide-awake,  "  if  it 
don't  look  out  sharp,  it  '11  begin  to  rain  afore  it 
thinks  on't."  The  day  was  mostly  spent  within 
doors ;  but  I  found  good  and  intelligent  society. 
We  should  have  to  be  shipwrecked  on  Juan  Fer- 
nandez not  to  find  men  who  knew  more  than  we. 
In  these  travelling  encounters  one  is  thrown  upon 
his  own  resources,  and  is  worth  just  what  he  car- 
ries about  him.  The  social  currency  of  home,  the 
smooth-worn  coin  which  passes  freely  among  friends 
and  neighbors,  is  of  no  account.  We  are  thrown 


20  A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL 

back  upon  the  old  system  of  barter ;  and,  even  with 
savages,  we  bring  away  only  as  much  of  the  wild 
wealth  of  the  woods  as  we  carry  beads  of  thought 
and  experience,  strung  one  by  one  in  painful  years, 
to  pay  for  them  with.  A  useful  old  jackknife  will 
buy  more  than  the  daintiest  Louis  Quinze  paper- 
folder  fresh  from  Paris.  Perhaps  the  kind  of  in- 
telligence one  gets  in  these  out-of-the-way  places 
is  the  best,  —  where  one  takes  a  fresh  man  after 
breakfast  instead  of  the  damp  morning  paper,  and 
where  the  magnetic  telegraph  of  human  sympathy 
flashes  swift  news  from  brain  to  brain. 

Meanwhile,  at  a  pinch,  to-morrow's  weather  can 
be  discussed.  The  augury  from  the  flight  of  birds 
is  favorable,  —  the  loons  no  longer  prophesying 
rain.  The  wind  also  is  hauling  round  to  the  right 
quarter,  according  to  some,  —  to  the  wrong,  if  we 
are  to  believe  others.  Each  man  has  his  private 
barometer  of  hope,  the  mercury  in  which  is  more 
or  less  sensitive,  and  the  opinion  vibrant  with  its 
rise  or  fall.  Mine  has  an  index  which  can  be 
moved  mechanically.  I  fixed  it  at  set  fair,  and  re- 
signed myself.  I  read  an  old  volume  of  the  Patent- 
Office  Report  on  Agriculture,  and  stored  away  a 
beautiful  pile  of  facts  and  observations  for  future 
use,  which  the  current  of  occupation,  at  its  first 
freshet,  would  sweep  quietly  off  to  blank  oblivion. 
Practical  application  is  the  only  mordant  which 
will  set  things  in  the  memory.  Study,  without  it, 
is  gymnastics,  and  not  work,  which  alone  will  get 
intellectual  bread.  One  learns  more  metaphysics 
from  a  single  temptation  than  from  all  the  philoso- 


A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL  21 

pliers.  It  is  curious,  though,  how  tyrannical  the 
habit  of  reading  is,  and  what  shifts  we  make  to 
escape  thinking.  There  is  no  bore  we  dread  being 
left  alone  with  so  much  as  our  own  minds.  I  have 
seen  a  sensible  man  study  a  stale  newspaper  in  a 
country  tavern,  and  husband  it  as  he  would  an  old 
shoe  on  a  raft  after  shipwreck.  Why  not  try  a  bit 
of  hibernation?  There  are  few  brains  that  would 
not  be  better  for  living  on  their  own  fat  a  little 
while.  With  these  reflections,  I,  notwithstanding, 
spent  the  afternoon  over  my  Report.  If  our  own 
experience  is  of  so  little  use  to  us,  what  a  dolt  is 
he  who  recommends  to  man  or  nation  the  experi- 
ence of  others !  Like  the  mantle  in  the  old  ballad, 
it  is  always  too  short  or  too  long,  and  exposes  or 
trips  us  up.  "Keep  out  of  that  candle,"  says  old 
Father  Miller,  "  or  you  '11  get  a  singeing."  "  Pooh, 
pooh,  father,  I  've  been  dipped  in  the  new  asbestos 
preparation,"  and  frozzl  it  is  all  over  with  young 
Hopeful.  How  many  warnings  have  been  drawn 
from  Pretorian  bands,  and  Janizaries,  and  Mame- 
lukes, to  make  Napoleon  III.  impossible  in  1851 ! 
I  found  myself  thinking  the  same  thoughts  over 
again,  when  we  walked  later  on  the  beach  and 
picked  up  pebbles.  The  old  time-ocean  throws 
upon  its  shores  just  such  rounded  and  polished  re- 
sults of  the  eternal  turmoil,  but  we  only  see  the 
beauty  of  those  we  have  got  the  headache  in  stoop- 
ing for  ourselves,  and  wonder  at  the  dull  brown 
bits  of  common  stone  with  which  our  comrades 
have  stuffed  their  pockets.  Afterwards  this  little 
fable  came  of  it. 


A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL 


DOCTOR  LOBSTER. 

A  PERCH,  who  had  the  toothache,  once 
Thus  moaned,  like  any  human  dunce : 
'  Why  must  great  souls  exhaust  so  soon 
Life's  thin  and  unsubstantial  boon  ? 
Existence  on  such  sculpin  terms, 
Their  vulgar  loves  and  hard-won  worms, 
What  is  it  all  but  dross  to  me, 
Whose  nature  craves  a  larger  sea ; 
Whose  inches,  six  from  head  to  tail, 
Enclose  the  spirit  of  a  whale  ; 
Who,  if  great  baits  were  still  to  win, 
By  watchful  eye  and  fearless  fin 
Might  with  the  Zodiac's  awful  twain 
Room  for  a  third  immortal  gain  ? 
Better  the  crowd's  unthinking  plan, 
The  hook,  the  jerk,  the  frying-pan ! 
O  Death,  thou  ever  roaming  shark, 
Ingulf  me  in  eternal  dark  !  " 

The  speech  was  cut  in  two  by  flight : 
A  real  shark  had  come  in  sight ; 
No  metaphoric  monster,  one 
It  soothes  despair  to  call  upon, 
But  stealthy,  sidelong,  grim,  i-wis, 
A  bit  of  downright  Nemesis  ; 
While  it  recovered  from  the  shock, 
Our  fish  took  shelter  'neath  a  rock: 
This  was  an  ancient  lobster's  house, 
A  lobster  of  prodigious  nous, 
So  old  that  barnacles  had  spread 
Their  white  encampments  o'er  his  head, 
And  of  experience  so  stupend, 
His  claws  were  blunted  at  the  end, 
Turning  life's  iron  pages  o'er, 
That  shut  and  can  be  oped  no  more. 

Stretching  a  hospitable  claw, 
'At  once,"  said  he,  "  the  point  I  saw; 


A    MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL  23 

My  dear  young  friend,  your  case  I  rue, 

Your  great-great-grandfather  I  knew ; 

He  was  a  tried  and  tender  friend 

I  know,  —  I  ate  him  in  the  end : 

In  this  vile  sea  a  pilgrim  long, 

Still  my  sight 's  good,  my  memory  strong ; 

The  only  sign  that  age  is  near 

Is  a  slight  deafness  in  this  ear ; 

I  understand  your  case  as  well 

As  this  my  old  familiar  shell ; 

This  Welt-schmerz  is  a  brand-new  notion, 

Come  in  since  first  I  knew  the  ocean  ; 

We  had  no  radicals,  nor  crimes, 

Nor  lobster-pots,  in  good  old  times  ; 

Your  traps  and  nets  and  hooks  we  owe 

To  Messieurs  Louis  Blanc  and  Co. ; 

I  say  to  all  my  sons  and  daughters, 

Shun  Red  Republican  hot  waters ; 

No  lobster  ever  cast  his  lot 

Among  the  reds,  but  went  to  pot : 

Your  trouble  's  in  the  jaw,  you  said  ? 

Come,  let  me  just  nip  off  your  head, 

And,  when  a  new  one  comes,  the  pain 

Will  never  trouble  you  again : 

Nay,  nay,  fear  naught :  't  is  nature's  law. 

Four  times  I  've  lost  this  starboard  claw ; 

And  still,  erelong,  another  grew, 

Good  as  the  old,  —  and  better  too !  " 

The  perch  consented,  and  next  day 
An  osprey,  marketing  that  way, 
Picked  up  a  fish  without  a  head, 
Floating  with  belly  up,  stone  dead. 


Sharp  are  the  teeth  of  ancient  saws, 
And  sauce  for  goose  is  gander's  sauce ; 
But  perch's  heads  are  n't  lobster's  claws. 

Monday,  \bth.  —  The  morning  was  fine,  and  we 
were  called  at  four  o'clock.     At  the  moment  my 


24  A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL 

door  was  knocked  at,  I  was  mounting  a  giraffe  with 
that  charming  nil  admirari  which  characterizes 
dreams,  to  visit  Prester  John.  Rat-tat-tat-tat ! 
upon  my  door  and  upon  the  horn  gate  of  dreams 
also.  I  remarked  to  my  skowhegan  (the  Tatar  for 
giraffe-driver)  that  I  was  quite  sure  the  animal  had 
the  raps,  a  common  disease  among  them,  for  I  heard 
a  queer  knocking  noise  inside  him.  It  is  the  sound 
of  his  joints,  O  Tambourgi!  (an  Oriental  term 
of  reverence,)  and  proves  him  to  be  of  the  race  of 
El  Keirat.  Rat-tat-tat-too  !  and  I  lost  my  dinner 
at  the  Prester's,  embarking  for  a  voyage  to  the 
Northwest  Carry  instead.  Never  use  the  word 
canoe,  my  dear  Storg,  if  you  wish  to  retain  your 
self-respect.  Birch  is  the  term  among  us  back- 
woodsmen. I  never  knew  it  till  yesterday;  but, 
like  a  true  philosopher,  I  made  it  appear  as  if  I 
had  been  intimate  with  it  from  childhood.  The 
rapidity  with  which  the  human  mind  levels  itself 
to  the  standard  around  it  gives  us  the  most  perti- 
nent warning  as  to  the  company  we  keep.  It  is 
as  hard  for  most  characters  to  stay  at  their  own 
average  point  in  all  companies,  as  for  a  thermom- 
eter to  say  65°  for  twenty-four  hours  together.  I 
like  this  in  our  friend  Johannes  Taurus,  that  he 
carries  everywhere  and  maintains  his  insular  tem- 
perature, and  will  have  everything  accommodate 
itself  to  that.  Shall  I  confess  that  this  morning  I 
would  rather  have  broken  the  moral  law,  than  have 
endangered  the  equipoise  of  the  birch  by  my  awk- 
wardness? that  I  should  have  been  prouder  of  a 
compliment  to  my  paddling,  than  to  have  had  both 


A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL  25 

my  guides  suppose  me  the  author  of  Hamlet? 
Well,  Cardinal  Richelieu  used  to  jump  over  chairs. 

We  were  to  paddle  about  twenty  miles  ;  but  we 
made  it  rather  more  by  crossing  and  recrossing  the 
lake.  Twice  we  landed,  —  once  at  a  camp,  where 
we  found  the  cook  alone,  baking  bread  and  ginger- 
bread. Monsieur  Soyer  would  have  been  startled. 
a  little  by  this  shaggy  professor,  —  this  Pre-Ra- 
phaelite of  cookery.  He  represented  the  salceratus 
period  of  the  art,  and  his  bread  was  of  a  brilliant 
yellow,  like  those  cakes  tinged  with  saffron,  which 
hold  out  so  long  against  time  and  the  flies  in  little 
water-side  shops  of  seaport  towns,  —  dingy  extrem- 
ities of  trade  fit  to  moulder  on  Lethe  wharf.  His 
water  was  better,  squeezed  out  of  ice-cold  granite 
in  the  neighboring  mountains,  and  sent  through 
subterranean  ducts  to  sparkle  up  by  the  door  o£ 
the  camp. 

"  There  's  nothin'  so  sweet  an'  hulsome  as  your 
real  spring  water,"  said  Uncle  Zeb,  "  git  it  pure. 
But  it 's  dreffle  hard  to  git  it  that  ain't  got  smithin' 
the  matter  of  it.  Snow-water  '11  burn  a  man's  in- 
side out,  —  I  lamed  that  to  the  'Roostick  war,  — 
and  the  snow  lays  terrible  long  on  some  o'  thes'ere 
hills.  Mo  an'  Eb  Stiles  was  up  old  Ktahdn  onct 
jest  about  this  time  o'  year,  an'  we  come  acrost  a 
kind  o'  holler  like,  as  full  o'  snow  as  your  stockin  's 
full  o'  your  foot.  /  see  it  fust,  an'  took  an' 
rammed  a  settin'-pole  —  wahl,  it  was  all  o'  twenty 
foot  into  't,  an'  couldn't  fin'  no  bottom.  I  dunno 
as  there  's  snow-water  enough  in  this  to  do  no  hurt. 
I  don't  somehow  seem  to  think  that  real  spring. 


26  A   MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL 

water 's  so  plenty  as  it  used  to  be."  And  Uncle 
Zeb,  with  perhaps  a  little  over-refinement  of  scru- 
pulosity, applied  his  lips  to  the  Ethiop  ones  of  a 
bottle  of  raw  gin,  with  a  kiss  that  drew  out  its  very 
soul,  —  a  basia  that  Secundus  might  have  sung. 
He  must  have  been  a  wonderful  judge  of  water,  for 
he  analyzed  this,  and  detected  its  latent  snow  sim- 
ply by  his  eye,  and  without  the  clumsy  process  of 
tasting.  I  could  not  help  thinking  that  he  had 
made  the  desert  his  dwelling-place  chiefly  in  order 
to  enjoy  the  ministrations  of  this  one  fair  spirit 
unmolested. 

We  pushed  on.  Little  islands  loomed  trembling 
between  sky  and  water,  like  hanging  gardens. 
Gradually  the  filmy  trees  defined  themselves,  the 
aerial  enchantment  lost  its  potency,  and  we  came 
up  with  common  prose  islands  that  had  so  late  been 
magical  and  poetic.  The  old  story  of  the  attained 
and  unattained.  About  noon  we  reached  the  head 
of  the  lake,  and  took  possession  of  a  deserted  won- 
gen,  in  which  to  cook  and  eat  our  dinner.  No  Jew, 
I  am  sure,  can  have  a  more  thorough  dislike  of  salt 
pork  than  I  have  in  a  normal  state,  yet  I  had 
already  eaten  it  raw  with  hard  bread  for  lunch,  and 
relished  it  keenly.  We  soon  had  our  tea-kettle 
over  the  fire,  and  before  long  the  cover  was  chatter- 
ing with  the  escaping  steam,  which  had  thus  vainly 
begged  of  all  men  to  be  saddled  and  bridled,  till 
James  Watt  one  day  happened  to  overhear  it. 
One  of  our  guides  shot  three  Canada  grouse,  and 
these  were  turned  slowly  between  the  fire  and  a  bit 
of  salt  pork,  which  dropped  fatness  upon  them  as 


A   MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL  27 

it  fried.  Although  my  fingers  were  certainly  not 
made  before  knives  and  forks,  yet  they  served  as  a 
convenient  substitute  for  those  more  ancient  inven- 
tions. We  sat  round,  Turk-fashion,  and  ate  thank- 
fully, while  a  party  of  aborigines  of  the  Mosquito 
tribe,  who  had  camped  in  the  wongen  before  we 
arrived,  dined  upon  us.  I  do  not  know  what  the 
British  Protectorate  of  the  Mosquitoes  amounts  to ; 
but,  as  I  squatted  there  at  the  mercy  of  these  blood- 
thirsty savages,  I  no  longer  wondered  that  the  clas- 
sic Everett  had  been  stung  into  a  willingness  for 
war  on  the  question. 

"  This  'ere  'd  be  about  a  complete  place  for  a 
camp,  ef  there  was  on'y  a  spring  o'  sweet  water 
handy.  Frizzled  pork  goes  wal,  don't  it?  Yes, 
an'  sets  wal,  too,"  said  Uncle  Zeb,  and  he  again 
tilted  his  bottle,  which  rose  nearer  and  nearer  to 
an  angle  of  forty-five  at  every  gurgle.  He  then 
broached  a  curious  dietetic  theory:  "The  reason 
we  take  salt  pork  along  is  cos  it  packs  handy :  you 
git  the  greatest  amount  o'  board  in  the  smallest 
compass,  —  let  alone  that  it 's  more  nourishin'  than 
an' thin'  else.  It  kind  o'  don't  disgest  so  quick,  but 
stays  by  ye,  anourishin'  ye  all  the  while. 

"  A  feller  can  live  wal  on  frizzled  pork  an'  good 
spring-water,  git  it  good.  To  the  'Eoostick  war 
we  did  n't  ask  for  nothin'  better,  —  on'y  beans." 
(Tilt,  tilt,  gurgle,  gurgle.*)  Then,  with  an  appar- 
ent feeling  of  inconsistency,  "But  then,  come  to 
git  used  to  a  particular  kind  o'  spring-water,  an 
it  makes  a  feller  hard  to  suit.  Most  all  sorts  o' 
water  taste  kind  o'  msipid  away  from  home.  Now, 


28  A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL 

I  've  gut  a  spring  to  my  place  that 's  as  sweet  — 
wahl,  it 's  as  sweet  as  maple  sap.  A  feller  acts 
about  water  jest  as  he  doos  'about  a  pair  o'  boots. 
It 's  all  on  it  in  gittin'  wonted.  Now,  them  boots," 
&c.,  &c.  (  Gurgle,  gurgle,  gurgle,  smack  /) 

All  this  while  he  was  packing  away  the  remains 
of  the  pork  and  hard  bread  in  two  large  firkins. 
This  accomplished,  we  reembarked,  our  uncle  on 
his  way  to  the  birch  essaying  a  kind  of  song  in 
four  or  five  parts,  of  which  the  words  were  hila- 
rious and  the  tune  profoundly  melancholy,  and 
which  was  finished,  and  the  rest  of  his  voice  appar- 
ently jerked  out  of  him  in  one  sharp  falsetto  note, 
by  his  tripping  over  the  root  of  a  tree.  We  pad- 
dled a  short  distance  up  a  brook  which  came  into 
the  lake  smoothly  through  a  little  meadow  not 
far  off.  We  soon  reached  the  Northwest  Carry, 
and  our  guide,  pointing  through  the  woods,  said: 
"  That 's  the  Cannydy  road.  You  can  travel  that 
clearn  to  Kebeck,  a  hunderd  an'  twenty  mile,"  —  a 
privilege  of  which  I  respectfully  declined  to  avail 
myself.  The  offer,  however,  remains  open  to  the 
public.  The  Carry  is  called  two  miles ;  but  this  is 
the  estimate  of  somebody  who  had  nothing  to  lug. 
I  had  a  headache  and  all  my  baggage,  which, 
with  a  traveller's  instinct,  I  had  brought  with  me. 
(P.  S.  —  I  did  not  even  take  the  keys  out  of  my 
pocket,  and  both  my  bags  were  wet  through  before 
I  came  back.)  My  estimate  of  the  distance  is 
eighteen  thousand  six  hundred  and  seventy-four 
miles  and  three  quarters,  —  the  fraction  being  the 
part  left  to  be  travelled  after  one  of  my  com- 


A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL  29 

panions  most  kindly  insisted  on  relieving  me  of 
my  heaviest  bag.  I  know  very  well  that  the  an- 
cient Roman  soldiers  used  to  carry  sixty  pounds' 
weight,  and  all  that ;  but  I  am  not,  and  never  shall 
be,  an  ancient  Roman  soldier,  —  no,  not  even  in 
the  miraculous  Thundering  Legion.  Uncle  Zeb 
slung  the  two  provender  firkins  across  his  shoulder, 
and  trudged  along,  grumbling  that  "  he  never  see 
sech  a  contrairy  pair  as  them."  He  had  begun 
upon  a  second  bottle  of  his  "particular  kind  o' 
spring-water,"  and,  at  every  rest,  the  gurgle  of  this 
peripatetic  fountain  might  be  heard,  followed  by  a 
smack,  a  fragment  of  mosaic  song,  or  a  confused 
clatter  with  the  cowhide  boots,  being  an  arbitrary 
symbol,  intended  to  represent  the  festive  dance. 
Christian's  pack  gave  him  not  half  so  much  trouble 
as  the  firkins  gave  Uncle  Zeb.  It  grew  harder 
and  harder  to  sling  them,  and  with  every  fresh 
gulp  of  the  Batavian  elixir,  they  got  heavier.  Or 
rather,  the  truth  was,  that  his  hat  grew  heavier, 
in  which  he  was  carrying  on  an  extensive  manu- 
facture of  bricks  without  straw.  At  last  affairs 
reached  a  crisis,  and  a  particularly  favorable  pitch 
offering,  with  a  puddle  at  the  foot  of  it,  even  the 
boots  afforded  no  sufficient  ballast,  and  away  went 
our  uncle,  the  satellite  firkins  accompanying  faith- 
fully his  headlong  flight.  Did  ever  exiled  monarch 
or  disgraced  minister  find  the  cause  of  his  fall  in 
himself  ?  Is  there  not  always  a  strawberry  at  the 
bottom  of  our  cup  of  life,  on  which  we  can  lay  all 
the  blame  of  our  deviations  from  the  straight  path  ? 
Till  now  Uncle  Zeb  had  contrived  to  give  a  gloss 


30  A   MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL 

of  volition  to  smaller  stumblings  and  gyrations,  by 
exaggerating  them  into  an  appearance  of  playful 
burlesque.  But  the  present  case  was  beyond  any 
such  subterfuges.  He  held  a  bed  of  justice  where 
he  sat,  and  then  arose  slowly,  with  a  stern  deter- 
mination of  vengeance  stiffening  every  muscle  of 
his  face.  But  what  would  he  select  as  the  culprit  ? 
"  It 's  that  cussed  firkin,"  he  mumbled  to  himself. 
"  I  never  knowed  a  firkin  cair  on  so,  —  no,  not  in 
the  'Roostehicick  war.  There,  go  long,  will  ye? 
and  don't  come  back  till  you  've  larned  how  to  walk 
with  a  genelman ! "  And,  seizing  the  unhappy 
scapegoat  by  the  bail,  he  hurled  it  into  the  forest. 
It  is  a  curious  circumstance,  that  it  was  not  the 
firkin  containing  the  bottle  which  was  thus  con- 
demned to  exile. 

The  end  of  the  Carry  was  reached  at  last,  and, 
as  we  drew  near  it,  we  heard  a  sound  of  shouting 
and  laughter.  It  came  from  a  party  of  men  making 
hay  of  the  wild  grass  in  Seboomok  meadows,  which 
lie  around  Seboomok  pond,  into  which  the  Carry 
empties  itself.  Their  camp  was  near,  and  our  two 
hunters  set  out  for  it,  leaving  us  seated  in  the 
birch  on  the  plashy  border  of  the  pond.  The  re- 
pose was  perfect.  Another  heaven  hallowed  and 
deepened  the  polished  lake,  and  through  that  nether 
world  the  fish-hawk's  double  floated  with  balanced 
wings,  or,  wheeling  suddenly,  flashed  his  whitened 
breast  against  the  sun.  As  the  clattering  king, 
fisher  flew  unsteadily  across,  and  seemed  to  push 
his  heavy  head  along  with  ever-renewing  effort,  a 
visionary  mate  flitted  from  downward  tree  to  tree 


A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL  31 

below.  Some  tall  alders  shaded  us  from  the  sun, 
in  whose  yellow  afternoon  light  the  drowsy  forest 
was  steeped,  giving  out  that  wholesome  resinous 
perfume,  almost  the  only  warm  odor  which  it  is 
refreshing  to  breathe.  The  tame  hay-cocks  in  the 
midst  of  the  wildness  gave  one  a  pleasant  reminis- 
cence of  home,  like  hearing  one's  native  tongue  in 
a  strange  country. 

Presently  our  hunters  came  back,  bringing  with 
them  a  tall,  thin,  active-looking  man,  with  black 
eyes,  that  glanced  unconsciously  on  all  sides,  like 
one  of  those  spots  of  sunlight  which  a  child  dances 
up  and  down  the  street  with  a  bit  of  looking-glass. 
This  was  M.,  the  captain  of  the  hay-makers,  a 
famous  river-driver,  and  who  was  to  have  fifty  men 
under  him  next  winter.  I  could  now  understand 
that  sleepless  vigilance  of  eye.  He  had  consented 
to  take  two  of  our  party  in  his  birch  to  seek  for 
moose.  A  quick,  nervous,  decided  man,  he  got 
them  into  the  birch,  and  was  off  instantly,  without 
a  superfluous  word.  He  evidently  looked  upon 
them  as  he  would  upon  a  couple  of  logs  which  he 
was  to  deliver  at  a  certain  place.  Indeed,  I  doubt 
if  life  and  the  world  presented  themselves  to  Napier 
himself  in  a  more  logarithmic  way.  His  only 
thought  was  to  do  the  immediate  duty  well,  and  to 
pilot  his  particular  raft  down  the  crooked  stream 
of  life  to  the  ocean  beyond.  The  birch  seemed  to 
feel  him  as  an  inspiring  soul,  and  slid  away  straight 
and  swift  for  the  outlet  of  the  pond.  As  he  disap- 
peared under  the  over-arching  alders  of  the  brook, 
our  two  hunters  could  not  repress  a  grave  and 


32  A   MOOSE  HEAD  JOURNAL 

measured  applause.     There  is  never  any  extrava- 
gance among  these  woodmen ;  their  eye,  accustomed 
to  reckoning  the  number  of  feet  which  a  tree  will 
scale,  is  rapid  and  close  in  its  guess  of  the  amount 
of  stuff  in  a  man.     It  was  laudari  a  laudato,  how- 
ever, for  they  themselves  were  accounted  good  men 
in  a  birch.     I  was  amused,  in  talking  with  them 
about  him,  to  meet  with  an  instance  of  that  ten- 
dency of  the  human  mind  to  assign  some  utterly 
improbable  reason  for  gifts  which  seem  unaccount- 
able.   After  due  praise,  one  of  them  said,  "  I  guess 
he 's  got  some  Injun  in  him,"  although  I  knew  very 
well  that  the  speaker  had  a  thorough  contempt  for 
the  red-man,  mentally  and  physically.     Here  was 
mythology  in  a  small  way,  —  the  same  that  under 
more  favorable  auspices  hatched  Helen  out  of  an 
egg  and  gave  Merlin  an  Incubus  for  his  father.     I 
was  pleased  with  all  I  saw  of  M.     He  was  in  his 
narrow  sphere  a  true  5.va.£  avSpStv,  and  the  ragged 
edges  of  his  old  hat  seemed  to  become  coronated  as 
I  looked   at  him.      He  impressed  me  as  a  man 
really  educated,  —  that  is,  with  his  aptitudes  draicn 
out  and  ready  for  use.     He  was  A.  M.  and  LL.  D. 
in  Woods  College,  —  Axe-master   and  Doctor  of 
Logs.      Are  not  our  educations  commonly  like  a 
pile  of  books  laid  over  a  plant  in  a  pot?    The  com- 
pressed nature  struggles  through  at  every  crevice, 
but  can  never  get  the  cramp  and  stunt  out  of  it. 
We  spend  all  our  youth  in  building  a  vessel  for 
our  voyage  of  life,  and  set  forth  with   streamers 
flying;  but  the  moment  we  come  nigh  the  great 
loadstone  mountain  of  our  proper  destiny,  out  leap 


A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL  33 

all  our  carefully-driven  bolts  and  nails,  and  we  get 
many  a  mouthful  of  good  salt  brine,  and  many  a 
buffet  of  the  rough  water  of  experience,  before  we 
secure  the  bare  right  to  live. 

We  now  entered  the  outlet,  a  long-drawn  aisle  of 
alder,  on  each  side  of  which  spired  tall  firs,  spruces, 
and  white  cedars.  The  motion  of  the  birch  re- 
minded me  of  the  gondola,  and  they  represent 
among  water-craft  thefelidce,  the  cat  tribe,  stealthy, 
silent,  treacherous,  and  preying  by  night.  I  closed 
my  eyes,  and  strove  to  fancy  myself  in  the  dumb 
city,  whose  only  horses  are  the  bronze  ones  of  St. 
Mark  and  that  of  Colleoni.  But  Nature  would 
allow  no  rival,  and  bent  down  an  alder-bough  to 
brush  my  cheek  and  recall  me.  Only  the  robin 
sings  in  the  emerald  chambers  of  these  tall  sylvan 
palaces,  and  the  squirrel  leaps  from  hanging  bal- 
cony to  balcony. 

The  rain  which  the  loons  foreboded  had  raised 
the  west  branch  of  the  Penobscot  so  much,  that 
a  strong  current  was  setting  back  into  the  pond ; 
and,  when  at  last  we  brushed  through  into  the 
river,  it  was  full  to  the  brim,  —  too  full  for  moose, 
the  hunters  said.  Rivers  with  low  banks  have  al- 
ways the  compensation  of  giving  a  sense  of  entire 
fulness.  The  sun  sank  behind  its  horizon  of  pines, 
whose  pointed  summits  notched  the  rosy  west  in  an 
endless  black  sierra.  At  the  same  moment  the 
golden  moon  swung  slowly  up  in  the  east,  like  the 
other  scale  of  that  Homeric  balance  in  which  Zeus 
weighed  the  deeds  of  men.  Sunset  and  moonrise 
at  once !  Adam  had  no  more  in  Eden  —  except  the 


34  A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL 

head  of  Eve  upon  his  shoulder.  The  stream  was 
so  smooth,  that  the  floating  logs  we  met  seemed  to 
hang  in  a  glowing  atmosphere,  the  shadow-half  be- 
ing as  real  as  the  solid.  And  gradually  the  mind 
was  etherized  to  a  like  dreamy  placidity,  till  fact 
and  fancy,  the  substance  and  the  image,  floating 
on  the  current  of  reverie,  became  but  as  the  upper 
and  under  halves  of  one  unreal  reality. 

In  the  west  still  lingered  a  pale-green  light.  I 
do  not  know  whether  it  be  from  lifelong  familiarity, 
but  it  always  seems  to  me  that  the  pinnacles  of 
pine-trees  make  an  edge  to  the  landscape  which 
tells  better  against  the  twilight,  or  the  fainter 
dawn  before  the  rising  moon,  than  the  rounded 
and  cloud-cumulus  outline  of  hard-wood  trees. 

After  paddling  a  couple  of  miles,  we  found  the 
arbored  mouth  of  the  little  Malahoodus  River, 
famous  for  moose.  We  had  been  on  the  lookout 
for  it,  and  I  was  amused  to  hear  one  of  the  hunters 
say  to  the  other,  to  assure  himself  of  his  familiarity 
with  the  spot,  "  You  drove  the  West  Branch  last 
spring,  did  n't  you  ?  "  as  one  of  us  might  ask  about 
a  horse.  We  did  not  explore  the  Malahoodus  far, 
but  left  the  other  birch  to  thread  its  cedared  soli- 
tudes, while  we  turned  back  to  try  our  fortunes  in 
the  larger  stream.  We  paddled  on  about  four 
miles  farther,  lingering  now  and  then  opposite  the 
black  mouth  of  a  moose-path.  The  incidents  of 
our  voyage  were  few,  but  quite  as  exciting  and 
profitable  as  the  items  of  the  newspapers.  A  stray 
log  compensated  very  well  for  the  ordinary  run  of 
accidents,  and  the  floating  carkiss  of  a  moose  which 


A   MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL  35 

we  met  could  pass  muster  instead  of  a  singular  dis- 
covery of  human  remains  by  workmen  in  digging  a 
cellar.  Once  or  twice  we  saw  what  seemed  ghosts 
of  trees ;  but  they  turned  out  to  be  dead  cedars,  in 
winding-sheets  of  long  gray  moss,  made  spectral  by 
the  moonlight.  Just  as  we  were  turning  to  drift 
back  down-stream,  we  heard  a  loud  gnawing  sound 
close  by  us  on  the  bank.  One  of  our  guides 
thought  it  a  hedgehog,  the  other  a  bear.  I  in- 
clined to  the  bear,  as  making  the  adventure  more 
imposing.  A  rifle  was  fired  at  the  sound,  which 
began  again  with  the  most  provoking  indifference, 
ere  the  echo,  flaring  madly  at  first  from  shore  to 
shore,  died  far  away  in  a  hoarse  sigh. 

Half  past  Eleven,  P.  M.  —  No  sign  of  a  moose 
yet.  The  birch,  it  seems,  was  strained  at  the 
Carry,  or  the  pitch  was  softened  as  she  lay  on  the 
shore  during  dinner,  and  she  leaks  a  little.  If 
there  be  any  virtue  in  the  sitzbad,  I  shall  discover 
it.  If  I  cannot  extract  green  cucumbers  from  the 
moon's  rays,  I  get  something  quite  as  cool.  One 
of  the  guides  shivers  so  as  to  shake  the  birch. 

Quarter  to  Twelve.  —  Later  from  the  Freshet! 
—  The  water  in  the  birch  is  about  three  inches 
deep,  but  the  dampness  reaches  already  nearly  to 
the  waist.  I  am  obliged  to  remove  the  matches 
from  the  ground-floor  of  my  trousers  into  the  upper 
story  of  a  breast-pocket.  Meanwhile,  we  are  to  sit 
immovable,  —  for  fear  of  frightening  the  moose,  — 
which  induces  cramps. 

Half  past  Twelve.  —  A  crashing  is  heard  on  the 
left  bank.  This  is  a  moose  in  good  earnest.  We 


36  A   MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL 

are  besought  to  hold  our  breaths,  if  possible.  My 
fingers  so  numb,  I  could  not,  if  I  tried.  Crash  ! 
crash  !  again,  and  then  a  plunge,  followed  by  dead 
stillness.  "  Swimmin'  crik,"  whispers  guide,  sup- 
pressing all  unnecessary  parts  of  speech,  —  "don't 
stir."  I,  for  one,  am  not  likely  to.  A  cold  fog 
which  has  been  gathering  for  the  last  hour  has  fin- 
ished me.  I  fancy  myself  one  of  those  naked  pigs 
that  seem  rushing  out  of  market-doors  in  winter, 
frozen  in  a  ghastly  attitude  of  gallop.  If  I  were 
to  be  shot  myself,  I  should  feel  no  interest  in  it. 
As  it  is,  I  am  only  a  spectator,  having  declined  a 
gun.  Splash!  again;  this  time  the  moose  is  in 
sight,  and  click !  click !  one  rifle  misses  fire  after 
the  other.  The  fog  has  quietly  spiked  our  bat- 
teries. The  moose  goes  crashing  up  the  bank,  and 
presently  we  can  hear  it  chawing  its  cud  close  by. 
So  we  lie  in  wait,  freezing. 

At  one  o'clock,  I  propose  to  land  at  a  deserted 
wongen  I  had  noticed  on  the  way  up,  where  I  will 
make  a  fire,  and  leave  them  to  refrigerate  as  much 
longer  as  they  please.  Axe  in  hand,  I  go  plung- 
ing through  waist-deep  weeds  dripping  with  dew, 
haunted  by  an  intense  conviction  that  the  gnawing 
sound  we  had  heard  was  a  bear,  and  a  bear  at  least 
eighteen  hands  high.  There  is  something  pokerish 
about  a  deserted  dwelling,  even  in  broad  daylight ; 
but  here  in  the  obscure  wood,  and  the  moon  filter- 
ing unwillingly  through  the  trees !  Well,  I  made 
the  door  at  last,  and  found  the  place  packed  fuller 
with  darkness  than  it  ever  had  been  with  hay. 
Gradually  I  was  able  to  make  things  out  a  little, 


A   MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL  37 

and  began  to  hack  frozenly  at  a  log  which  I  groped 
out.  I  was  relieved  presently  by  one  of  the  guides. 
He  cut  at  once  into  one  of  the  uprights  of  the  build- 
ing till  he  got  some  dry  splinters,  and  we  soon  had 
a  fire  like  the  burning  of  a  whole  wood- wharf  in  our 
part  of  the  country.  My  companion  went  back  to 
the  birch,  and  left  me  to  keep  house.  First  I 
knocked  a  hole  in  the  roof  (which  the  fire  began 
to  lick  in  a  relishing  way)  for  a  chimney,  and  then 
cleared  away  a  damp  growth  of  "  pison-elder,"  to 
make  a  sleeping  place.  When  the  unsuccessful 
hunters  returned,  I  had  everything  quite  comfort- 
able, and  was  steaming  at  the  rate  of  about  ten 
horse-power  a  minute.  Young  Telemachus 1  was 
sorry  to  give  up  the  moose  so  soon,  and,  with  the 
teeth  chattering  almost  out  of  his  head,  he  declared 
that  he  would  like  to  stick  it  out  all  night.  How- 
ever, he  reconciled  himself  to  the  fire,  and,  making 
our  beds  of  some  "  splits  "  which  we  poked  from 
the  roof,  we  lay  down  at  half  past  two.  I,  who 
have  in-herited  a  habit  of  looking  into  every  closet 
before  I  go  to  bed,  for  fear  of  fire,  had  become  in 
two  days  such  a  stoic  of  the  woods,  that  I  went  to 
sleep  tranquilly,  certain  that  my  bedroom  would  be 
in  a  blaze  before  morning.  And  so,  indeed,  it  was  ; 
and  the  withes  that  bound  it  together  being  burned 
off,  one  of  the  sides  fell  in  without  waking  me. 

Tuesday,  \QtJi.  —  After  a  sleep  of  two  hours  and 
a  half,  so  sound  that  it  was  as  good  as  eight,  we 
started  at  half  past  four  for  the  hay-makers'  camp 

1  This  was  my  nephew,  Charles  Russell  Lowell,  who  fell  at  the 
head  of  his  brigade  in  the  battle  of  Cedar  Creek. 


262514 


38  A   MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL 

again.  We  found  them  just  getting  breakfast. 
We  sat  down  upon  the  deacon-seat  before  the  fire 
blazing  between  the  bedroom  and  the  salle  a  man- 
ger, which  were  simply  two  roofs  of  spruce-bark, 
sloping  to  the  ground  on  one  side,  the  other  three 
being  left  open.  We  found  that  we  had,  at  least, 
been  luckier  than  the  other  party,  for  M.  had 
brought  back  his  convoy  without  even  seeing  a 
moose.  As  there  was  not  room  at  the  table  for  all  of 
us  to  breakfast  together,  these  hospitable  woodmen 
forced  us  to  sit  down  first,  although  we  resisted 
stoutly.  Our  breakfast  consisted  of  fresh  bread, 
fried  salt  pork,  stewed  whortleberries,  and  tea.  Our 
kind  hosts  refused  to  take  money  for  it,  nor  would 
M.  accept  anything  for  his  trouble.  This  seemed 
even  more  open-handed  when  I  remembered  that 
they  had  brought  all  their  stores  over  the  Carry 
upon  their  shoulders,  paying  an  ache  extra  for 
every  pound.  If  their  hospitality  lacked  anything 
of  hard  external  polish,  it  had  all  the  deeper  grace 
which  springs  only  from  sincere  manliness.  I  have 
rarely  sat  at  a  table  d'hote  which  might  not  have 
taken  a  lesson  from  them  in  essential  courtesy.  I 
have  never  seen  a  finer  race  of  men.  They  have 
all  the  virtues  of  the  sailor,  without  that  unsteady 
roll  in  the  gait  with  which  the  ocean  proclaims  it- 
self quite  as  much  in  the  moral  as  in  the  physical 
habit  of  a  man.  They  appeared  to  me  to  have  hewn 
out  a  short  northwest  passage  through  wintry  woods 
to  those  spice-lands  of  character  which  we  dwellers 
in  cities  must  reach,  if  at  all,  by  weary  voyages  in 
the  monotonous  track  of  the  trades. 


A   MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL  39 

By  the  way,  as  we  wera  embirching  last  evening 
for  our  moose-chase,  I  asked  what  I  was  to  do  with 
my  baggage.  "  Leave  it  here,"  said  our  guide,  and 
he  laid  the  bags  upon  a  platform  of  alders,  which 
he  bent  down  to  keep  them  beyond  reach  of  the 
rising  water. 

"  Will  they  be  safe  here  ?  " 

"  As  safe  as  they  would  be  locked  up  in  your 
house  at  home." 

And  so  I  found  them  at  my  return ;  only  the 
hay-makers  had  carried  them  to  their  camp  for 
greater  security  against  the  chances  of  the  weather. 

We  got  back  to  Kineo  in  time  for  dinner ;  and 
in  the  afternoon,  the  weather  being  fine,  went  up 
the  mountain.  As  we  landed  at  the  foot,  our  guide 
pointed  to  the  remains  of  a  red  shirt  and  a  pair  of 
blanket  trousers.  "  That,"  said  he,  "  is  the  reason 
there 's  such  a  trade  in  ready-made  clo'es.  A  suit 
gits  pooty  well  wore  out  by  the  time  a  camp  breaks 
up  in  the  spring,  and  the  lumberers  want  to  look 
about  right  when  they  come  back  into  the  settle- 
ments, so  they  buy  somethin'  ready-made,  and 
heave  ole  bust-up  into  the  bush."  True  enough, 
thought  I,  this  is  the  Ready-made  Age.  It  is 
quicker  being  covered  than  fitted.  So  we  all  go 
to  the  slop-shop  and  come  out  uniformed,  every 
mother's  son  with  habits  of  thinking  and  doing  cut 
on  one  pattern,  with  no  special  reference  to  his 
peculiar  build. 

Kineo  rises  1750  feet  above  the  sea,  and  750 
above  the  lake.  The  climb  is  very  easy,  with  fine 
outlooks  at  every  turn  over  lake  and  forest.  Near 


40  A   MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL 

the  top  is  a  spring  of  water,  which  even  Uncle  Zeb 
might  have  allowed  to  be  wholesome.  The  little 
tin  dipper  was  scratched  all  over  with  names,  show- 
ing that  vanity,  at  least,  is  not  put  out  of  breath 
by  the  ascent.  O  Ozymandias,  King  of  kings! 
We  are  all  scrawling  on  something  of  the  kind. 
"  My  name  is  engraved  on  the  institutions  of  my 
country,"  thinks  the  statesman.  But,  alas !  insti- 
tutions are  as  changeable  as  tin-dippers ;  men  are 
content  to  drink  the  same  old  water,  if  the  shape 
of  the  cup  only  be  new,  and  our  friend  gets  two 
lines  in  the  Biographical  Dictionaries.  After  all, 
these  inscriptions,  which  make  us  smile  up  here, 
are  about  as  valuable  as  the  Assyrian  ones  which 
Hincks  and  Rawlinson  read  at  cross-purposes. 
Have  we  not  Smiths  and  Browns  enough,  that  we 
must  ransack  the  ruins  of  Nimroud  for  more? 
Near  the  spring  we  met  a  Bloomer !  It  was  the 
first  chronic  one  I  had  ever  seen.  It  struck  me  as 
a  sensible  costume  for  the  occasion,  and  it  will  be 
the  only  wear  in  the  Greek  Kalends,  when  women 
believe  that  sense  is  an  equivalent  for  grace. 

The  forest  primeval  is  best  seen  from  the  top  of 
a  mountain.  It  then  impresses  one  by  its  extent, 
like  an  Oriental  epic.  To  be  in  it  is  nothing,  for 
then  an  acre  is  as  good  as  a  thousand  square  miles. 
You  cannot  see  five  rods  in  any  direction,  and  the 
ferns,  mosses,  and  tree-trunks  just  around  you  are 
the  best  of  it.  As  for  solitude,  night  will  make  a 
better  one  with  ten  feet  square  of  pitch  dark ;  and 
mere  size  is  hardly  an  element  of  grandeur,  except 
in  works  of  man,  —  as  the  Colosseum.  It  is 


A   MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL  41 

through  one  or  the  other  pole  of  vanity  that  men 
feel  the  sublime  in  mountains.  It  is  either,  How 
small  great  I  am  beside  it!  or,  Big  as  you  are, 
little  I's  soul  will  hold  a  dozen  of  you.  The  true 
idea  of  a  forest  is  not  a  selva  selvaggia,  but  some- 
thing humanized  a  little,  as  we  imagine  the  forest 
of  Arden,  with  trees  standing  at  royal  intervals,  — 
a  commonwealth,  and  not  a  communism.  To  some 
moods,  it  is  congenial  to  look  over  endless  leagues 
of  unbroken  savagery  without  a  hint  of  man. 

Wednesday.  —  This  morning  fished.  Telemachus 
caught  a  laker  of  thirteen  pounds  and  a  half,  and 
I  an  overgrown  cusk,  which  we  threw  away,  but 
which  I  found  afterwards  Agassiz  would  have  been 
glad  of,  for  all  is  fish  that  comes  to  his  net, 
from  the  fossil  down.  The  fish,  when  caught,  are 
straightway  knocked  on  the  head.  A  lad  who  went 
with  us  seeming  to  show  an  over-zeal  in  this  oper- 
ation, we  remonstrated.  But  he  gave  a  good, 
human  reason  for  it,  — "  He  no  need  to  ha'  gone 
and  been  a  fish  if  he  did  n't  like  it,"  —  an  excuse 
which  superior  strength  or  cunning  has  always 
found  sufficient.  It  was  some  comfort,  in  this  case, 
to  think  that  St.  Jerome  believed  in  a  limitation 
of  God's  providence,  and  that  it  did  not  extend  to 
inanimate  things  or  creatures  devoid  of  reason. 

Thus,  my  dear  Storg,  I  have  finished  my  Oriental 
adventures,  and  somewhat,  it  must  be  owned,  in  the 
diffuse  Oriental  manner.  There  is  very  little  about 
Moosehead  Lake  in  it,  and  not  even  the  Latin 
name  for  moose,  which  I  might  have  obtained  by 
sufficient  research.  If  I  had  killed  one,  I  would 


42  A   MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL 

have  given  you  his  name  in  that  dead  language.  I 
did  not  profess  to  give  you  an  account  of  the  lake ; 
but  a  journal,  and,  moreover,  my  journal,  with  a 
little  nature,  a  little  human  nature,  and  a  great 
deal  of  I  in  it,  which  last  ingredient  I  take  to 
be  the  true  spirit  of  this  species  of  writing ;  all  the 
rest  being  so  much  water  for  tender  throats  which 
cannot  take  it  neat. 


CAMBEIDGE  THIRTY  YEAKS  AGO 
1854 

A  MEMOIR   ADDRESSED   TO   THE   EDELMANN  STORG  IN 
ROME. 

IN  those  quiet  old  winter  evenings,  around  our 
Roman  fireside,  it  was  not  seldom,  my  dear  Storg, 
that  we  talked  of  the  advantages  of  travel,  and  in 
speeches  not  so  long  that  our  cigars  would  forget 
their  fire  (the  measure  of  just  conversation)  de- 
bated the  comparative  advantages  of  the  Old  and 
New  Worlds.  You  will  remember  how  serenely 
I  bore  the  imputation  of  provincialism,  while  I 
asserted  that  those  advantages  were  reciprocal; 
that  an  orbed  and  balanced  life  would  revolve  be- 
tween the  Old  and  the  New  as  opposite,  but  not 
antagonistic  poles,  the  true  equator  lying  some- 
where midway  between  them.  I  asserted  also,  that 
there  were  two  epochs  at  which  a  man  might  travel, 
—  before  twenty,  for  pure  enjoyment,  and  after 
thirty,  for  instruction.  At  twenty,  the  eye  is  suffi- 
ciently delighted  with  merely  seeing;  new  things 
are  pleasant  only  because  they  are  not  old ;  and  we 
take  everything  heartily  and  naturally  in  the  right 
way,  —  for  even  mishaps  are  like  knives,  that  either 
serve  us  or  cut  us,  as  we  grasp  them  by  the  blade 
or  the  handle.  After  thirty,  we  carry  along  our 


44        CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY   YEARS  AGO 

scales,  with  lawful  weights  stamped  by  experience, 
and  our  chemical  tests  acquired  by  study,  with 
which  to  ponder  and  assay  all  arts,  institutions, 
and  manners,  and  to  ascertain  either  their  absolute 
worth  or  their  merely  relative  value  to  ourselves. 
On  the  whole,  I  declared  myself  in  favor  of  the 
after  thirty  method,  —  was  it  partly  (so  difficult  is 
it  to  distinguish  between  opinions  and  personalities) 
because  I  had  tried  it  myself,  though  with  scales  so 
imperfect  and  tests  so  inadequate?  Perhaps  so, 
but  more  because  I  held  that  a  man  should  have 
travelled  thoroughly  round  himself  and  the  great 
terra  incognita  just  outside  and  inside  his  own 
threshold,  before  he  undertook  voyages  of  discovery 
to  other  worlds.  "Far  countries  he  can  safest 
visit  who  himself  is  doughty,"  says  Beowulf.  Let 
him  first  thoroughly  explore  that  strange  country 
laid  down  on  the  maps  as  SEAUTON  ;  let  him  look 
down  into  its  craters,  and  find  whether  they  be 
burnt-out  or  only  smouldering ;  let  him  know  be- 
tween the  good  and  evil  fruits  of  its  passionate 
tropics ;  let  him  experience  how  healthful  are  its 
serene  and  high-lying  table-lands ;  let  him  be  many 
times  driven  back  (till  he  wisely  consent  to  be  baf- 
fled) from  its  speculatively  inquisitive  northwest 
passages  that  lead  mostly  to  the  dreary  solitudes 
of  a  sunless  world,  before  he  think  himself  morally 
equipped  for  travels  to  more  distant  regions.  So 
thought  pithy  Thomas  Fuller.  "Who,"  he  says, 
"hath  sailed  about  the  world  of  his  own  heart, 
sounded  each  creek,  surveyed  each  corner,  but  that 
still  there  remains  therein  much  '  terra  inco<rnita ' 


CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY   YEARS  AGO        45 

to  himself?"1  But  does  he  commonly  even  so 
much  as  think  of  this,  or,  while  buying  amplest 
trunks  for  his  corporeal  apparel,  does  it  once  occur 
to  him  how  very  small  a  portmanteau  will  contain 
all  his  mental  and  spiritual  outfit?  It  is  more 
often  true  that  a  man  who  could  scarce  be  induced 
to  expose  his  unclothed  body  even  to  a  village  of 
prairie-dogs,  will  complacently  display  a  mind  as 
naked  as  the  day  it  was  born,  without  so  much  as 
a  fig-leaf  of  acquirement  on  it,  in  every  gallery  of 
Europe,  — 

"  Not  caring,  so  that  sumpter-horse,  the  back, 
Be  hung  with  gaudy  trappings,  in  what  coarse, 
Yea,  rags  most  beggarly,  they  clothe  the  soul." 

If  not  with  a  robe  dyed  in  the  Tyrian  purple  of 
imaginative  culture,  if  not  with  the  close-fitting, 
work-day  dress  of  social  or  business  training,  —  at 
least,  my  dear  Storg,  one  might  provide  himself 
with  the  merest  waist-clout  of  modesty ! 

But  if  it  be  too  much  to  expect  men  to  traverse 
and  survey  themselves  before  they  go  abroad,  we 
might  certainly  ask  that  they  should  be  familiar 
with  their  own  villages.  If  not  even  that,  then  it 
is  of  little  import  whither  they  go  ;  and  let  us  hope 
that,  by  seeing  how  calmly  their  own  narrow  neigh- 
borhood bears  their  departure,  they  may  be  led  to 
think  that  the  circles  of  disturbance  set  in  motion 
by  the  fall  of  their  tiny  -drop  into  the  ocean  of 
eternity  will  not  have  a  radius  of  more  than  a 
week  in  any  direction ;  and  that  the  world  can 
endure  the  subtraction  of  even  a  justice  of  the 
1  Holy  State:  The  Constant  Virgin. 


46        CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO 

peace  with  provoking  equanimity.  In  this  way,  at 
least,  foreign  travel  may  do  them  good, — may 
make  them,  if  not  wiser,  at  any  rate  less  fussy.  Is 
it  a  great  way  to  go  to  school,  and  a  great  fee  to 
pay  for  the  lesson  ?  We  cannot  give  too  much  for 
the  genial  stoicism  which,  when  life  flouts  us,  and 
says,  Put  that  in  your  pipe  and  smoke  it!  can 
puff  away  with  as  sincere  a  relish  as  if  it  were 
tobacco  of  Mount  Lebanon  in  a  narghileh  of  Da- 
mascus. 

It  has  passed  into  a  scornful  proverb,  that  it 
needs  good  optics  to  see  what  is  not  to  be  seen ; 
and  yet  I  should  be  inclined  to  say  that  the  first 
essential  of  a  good  traveller  was  to  be  gifted  with 
eyesight  of  precisely  that  kind.  All  his  senses 
should  be  as  delicate  as  eyes;  and,  above  all,  he 
should  be  able  to  see  with  the  fine  eye  of  imagina- 
tion, compared  with  which  all  the  other  organs 
with  which  the  mind  grasps  and  the  memory  holds 
are  as  clumsy  as  thumbs.  The  demand  for  this 
kind  of  traveller  and  the  opportunity  for  him  in- 
crease as  we  learn  more  and  more  minutely  the  dry 
facts  and  figures  of  the  most  inaccessible  corners 
of  the  earth's  surface.  There  is  no  hope  of  another 
Ferdinand  Mendez  Pinto,  with  his  statistics  of 
Dreamland,  who  makes  no  difficulty  of  impressing 
"fourscore  thousand  rhinocerots"  to  draw  the 
wagons  of  the  King  of  Tartary's  army,  or  of  kill- 
ing eight  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  men  with  a 
flourish  of  his  quill,  —  for  what  were  a  few  ciphers 
to  him,  when  his  inkhorn  was  full  and  all  Christen- 
dom to  be  astonished  ?  —  but  there  is  all  the  more 


CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY  YEARS  AGO        47 

need  of  voyagers  who  give  us  something  better 
than  a  census  of  population,  and  who  know  of 
other  exports  from  strange  countries  than  can  be 

expressed  by  $ .  Give  me  the  traveller  who 

makes  me  feel  the  mystery  of  the  Figure  at  Sais, 
whose  veil  hides  a  new  meaning  for  every  beholder, 
rather  than  him  who  brings  back  a  photograph  of 
the  uncovered  countenance,  with  its  one  unvarying 
granite  story  for  all.  There  is  one  glory  of  the 
Gazetteer  with  his  fixed  facts,  and  another  of  the 
Poet  with  his  variable  quantities  of  fancy. 

After  all,  my  dear  Storg,  it  is  to  know  things 
that  one  has  need  to  travel,  and  not  men.  Those 
force  us  to  come  to  them,  but  these  come  to  us,  — 
sometimes  whether  we  will  or  no.  These  exist  for 
us  in  every  variety  in  our  own  town.  You  may 
find  your  antipodes  without  a  voyage  to  China ;  he 
lives  there,  just  round  the  next  corner,  precise,  for- 
mal, the  slave  of  precedent,  making  all  his  teacups 
with  a  break  in  the  edge,  because  his  model  had 
one,  and  your  fancy  decorates  him  with  an  endless- 
ness of  airy  pigtail.  There,  too,  are  John  Bull, 
Jean  Crapaud,  Hans  Sauerkraut,  Pat  Murphy,  and 
the  rest. 

It  has  been  written : 

"  He  needs  no  ship  to  cross  the  tide, 
Who,  in  the  lives  around  him,  sees 
Fair  window-prospects  opening  wide 
O'er  history's  fields  on  every  side, 
Rome,  Egypt,  England,  Ind,  and  Greece. 

"  Whatever  moulds  of  various  brain 
E'er  shaped  the  world  to  weal  or  woe, 
Whatever  empires'  wax  and  wane, 


48         CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY   YEARS  AGO 

To  him  who  hath  not  eyes  in  vain, 
His  village-microcosm  can  show." 

But  every  thing  is  not  a  Thing,  and  all  things  are 
good  for  nothing  out  of  their  natural  habitat.  If 
the  heroic  Barnum  had  succeeded  in  transplanting 
Shakespeare's  house  to  America,  what  interest 
would  it  have  had  for  us,  torn  out  of  its  appro- 
priate setting  in  softly-hilled  Warwickshire,  which 
showed  us  that  the  most  English  of  poets  must  be 
born  in  the  most  English  of  counties  ?  I  mean  by 
a  Thing  that  which  is  not  a  mere  spectacle,  that 
which  some  virtue  of  the  mind  leaps  forth  to,  as  it 
also  sends  forth  its  sympathetic  flash  to  the  mind, 
as  soon  as  they  come  within  each  other's  sphere  of 
attraction,  and,  with  instantaneous  coalition,  form 
a  new  product,  —  knowledge. 

Such,  in  the  understanding  it  gives  us  of  early 
Roman  history,  is  the  little  territory  around  Rome, 
the  gentis  cunabula,  without  a  sight  of  which  Livy 
and  Niebuhr  and  the  maps  are  vain.  So,  too,  one 
must  go  to  Pompeii  and  the  Museo  Borbonico,  to 
get  a  true  conception  of  that  wondrous  artistic 
nature  of  the  Greeks,  strong  enough,  even  in  that 
petty  colony,  to  survive  foreign  conquest  and  to 
assimilate  barbarian  blood,  showing  a  grace  and 
fertility  of  invention  whose  Roman  copies  Rafaello 
himself  could  only  copy,  and  enchanting  even  the 
base  utensils  of  the  kitchen  with  an  inevitable  sense 
of  beauty  to  which  we  subterranean  Northmen 
have  not  yet  so  much  as  dreamed  of  climbing. 
Mere  sights  one  can  see  quite  as  well  at  home. 
Mont  Blanc  does  not  tower  more  grandly  in  the 


CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO        49 

memory  than  did  the  dream-peak  which  loomed 
afar  on  the  morning  horizon  of  hope,  nor  did  the 
smoke-palm  of  Vesuvius  stand  more  erect  and  fair, 
with  tapering  stem  and  spreading  top,  in  that  Par- 
thenopean  air,  than  under  the  diviner  sky  of  imag- 
ination. I  know  what  Shakespeare  says  about 
homekeeping  youths,  and  I  can  fancy  what  you 
will  add  about  America  being  interesting  only  as  a 
phenomenon,  and  uncomfortable  to  live  in,  because 
we  have  not  yet  done  with  getting  ready  to  live. 
But  is  not  your  Europe,  on  the  other  hand,  a  place 
where  men  have  done  living  for  the  present,  and 
of  value  chiefly  because  of  the  men  who  had  done 
living  in  it  long  ago?  And  if,  in  our  rapidly 
moving  country,  one  feel  sometimes  as  if  he  had 
his  home  on  a  railroad-train,  is  there  not  also  a 
satisfaction  in  knowing  that  one  is  going  some- 
where ?  To  what  end  visit  Europe,  if  people  carry 
with  them,  as  most  do,  their  old  parochial  horizon, 
going  hardly  as  Americans  even,  much  less  as 
men  ?  Have  we  not  both  seen  persons  abroad  who 
put  us  in  mind  of  parlor  gold-fish  in  their  vase, 
isolated  in  that  little  globe  of  their  own  element, 
incapable  of  communication  with  the  strange  world 
around  them,  a  show  themselves,  while  it  was  al- 
ways doubtful  if  they  could  see  at  all  beyond  the 
limits  of  their  portable  prison?  The  wise  man 
travels  to  discover  himself ;  it  is  to  find  himself  out 
that  he  goes  out  of  himself  and  his  habitual  asso- 
ciations, trying  everything  in  turn  till  he  find  that 
one  activity,  that  royal  standard,  sovran  over  him 
by  divine  right,  toward  which  all  the  disbanded 


50        CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO 

powers  of  his  nature  and  the  irregular  tendencies 
of  his  life  gather  joyfully,  as  to  the  common  rally- 
ing-point  of  their  loyalty. 

All  these  things  we  debated  while  the  ilex  logs 
upon  the  hearth  burned  down  to  tinkling  coals, 
over  which  a  gray,  soft  moss  of  ashes  grew  betimes, 
mocking  the  poor  wood  with  a  pale  travesty  of  that 
green  and  gradual  decay  on  forest-floors,  its  natural 
end.  Already  the  clock  at  the  Cappuccini  told 
the  morning  quarters,  and  on  the  pauses  of  our 
talk  no  sound  intervened  but  the  muffled  hoot  of 
an  owl  in  the  near  convent-garden,  or  the  rattling 
tramp  of  a  patrol  of  that  French  army  which  keeps 
him  a  prisoner  in  his  own  city  who  claims  to  lock 
and  unlock  the  doors  of  heaven.  But  still  the  dis- 
course would  eddy  round  one  obstinate  rocky  tenet 
of  mine,  for  I  maintained,  you  remember,  that  the 
wisest  man  was  he  who  stayed  at  home  ;  that  to  see 
the  antiquities  of  the  Old  World  was  nothing, 
since  the  youth  of  the  world  was  really  no  farther 
away  from  us  than  our  own  youth ;  and  that,  more- 
over, we  had  also  in  America  things  amazingly  old, 
as  our  boys,  for  example.  Add,  that  in  the  end 
this  antiquity  is  a  matter  of  comparison,  which 
skips  from  place  to  place  as  nimbly  as  Emerson's 
Sphinx,  and  that  one  old  thing  is  good  only  till  we 
have  seen  an  older.  England  is  ancient  till  we  go 
to  Rome ;  Etruria  dethrones  Rome,  but  only  to 
pass  this  sceptre  of  antiquity  which  so  lords  it  over 
our  fancies  to  the  Pelasgi,  from  whom  Egypt 
straightway  wrenches  it,  to  give  it  up  in  turn  to 
older  India.  And  whither  then?  As  well  rest 


CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO        51 

upon  the  first  step,  since  the  effect  of  what  is  old 
upon  the  mind  is  single  and  positive,  not  cumulative. 
As  soon  as  a  thing  is  past,  it  is  as  infinitely  far 
away  from  us  as  if  it  had  happened  millions  of 
years  ago.  And  if  the  learned  Huet  be  correct, 
who  reckoned  that  all  human  thoughts  and  records 
could  be  included  in  ten  folios,  what  so  frightfully 
old  as  we  ourselves,  who  can,  if  we  choose,  hold  in 
our  memories  every  syllable  of  recorded  time,  from 
the  first  crunch  of  Eve's  teeth  in  the  apple  down- 
ward, being  thus  ideally  contemporary  with  hoariest 
Eld? 

"  Thy  pyramids  built  up  with  newer  might 
To  us  are  nothing  novel,  nothing  strange." 

Now,  my  dear  Storg,  you  know  my  (what  the 
phrenologists  call)  inhabitiveness  and  adhesiveness, 
—  how  I  stand  by  the  old  thought,  the  old  thing, 
the  old  place,  and  the  old  friend,  till  I  am  very 
sure  I  have  got  a  better,  and  even  then  migrate 
painfully.  Remember  the  old  Arabian  story,  and 
think  how  hard  it  is  to  pick  up  all  the  pomegranate- 
seeds  of  an  opponent's  argument,  and  how,  so  long 
as  one  remains,  you  are  as  far  from  the  end  as 
ever.  Since  I  have  you  entirely  at  my  mercy,  (for 
you  cannot  answer  me  under  five  weeks,)  you  will 
not  be  surprised  at  the  advent  of  this  letter.  I 
had  always  one  impregnable  position,  which  was, 
that,  however  good  other  places  might  be,  there  was 
only  one  in  which  we  could  be  born,  and  which 
therefore  possessed  a  quite  peculiar  and  inalienable 
virtue.  We  had  the  fortune,  which  neither  of  us 
have  had  reason  to  call  other  than  good,  to  journey 


52         CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO 

together  through  the  green,  secluded  valley  of  boy- 
hood ;  together  we  climbed  the  mountain  wall  which 
shut  in,  and  looked  down  upon,  those  Italian  plains 
of  early  manhood ;  and,  since  then,  we  have  met 
sometimes  by  a  well,  or  broken  bread  together  at 
an  oasis  in  the  arid  desert  of  life,  as  it  truly  is. 
With  this  letter  I  propose  to  make  you  my  fellow- 
traveller  in  one  of  those  fireside  voyages  which, 
as  we  grow  older,  we  make  oftener  and  oftener 
through  our  own  past.  Without  leaving  your  elbow- 
chair,  you  shall  go  back  with  me  thirty  years,  which 
will  bring  you  among  things  and  persons  as  thor- 
oughly preterite  as  Romulus  or  Numa.  For  so 
rapid  are  our  changes  in  America  that  the  transi- 
tion from  old  to  new,  the  shifting  from  habits  and 
associations  to  others  entirely  different,  is  as  rapid 
almost  as  the  passing  in  of  one  scene  and  the  draw- 
ing out  of  another  on  the  stage.  And  it  is  this 
which  makes  America  so  interesting  to  the  philo- 
sophic student  of  history  and  man.  Here,  as  in 
a  theatre,  the  great  problems  of  anthropology  — 
which  in  the  Old  World  were  ages  in  solving,  but 
which  are  solved,  leaving  only  a  dry  net  result  — 
are  compressed,  as  it  were,  into  the  entertainment 
of  a  few  hours.  Here  we  have  I  know  not  how 
many  epochs  of  history  and  phases  of  civilization 
contemporary  with  each  other,  nay,  within  five 
minutes  of  each  other,  by  the  electric  telegraph. 
In  two  centuries  we  have  seen  rehearsed  the  dis- 
persion of  man  from  a  small  point  over  a  whole 
continent ;  we  witness  with  our  own  eyes  the  action 
of  those  forces  which  govern  the  great  migration  of 


CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY  YEARS  AGO        53 

the  peoples  now  historical  in  Europe ;  we  can  watch 
the  action  and  reaction  of  different  races,  forms 
of  government,  and  higher  or  lower  civilizations. 
Over  there,  you  have  only  the  dead  precipitate,  de- 
manding tedious  analysis ;  but  here  the  elements 
are  all  in  solution,  and  we  have  only  to  look  to  see 
how  they  will  combine.  History,  which  every  day 
makes  less  account  of  governors  and  more  of  man, 
must  find  here  the  compendious  key  to  all  that  pic- 
ture-writing of  the  Past.  Therefore  it  is,  my  dear 
Storg,  that  we  Yankees  may  still  esteem  our  Amer- 
ica a  place  worth  living  in.  But  calm  your  appre- 
hensions ;  I  do  not  propose  to  drag  you  with  me  on 
such  an  historical  circumnavigation  of  the  globe, 
but  only  to  show  you  that  (however  needful  it  may 
be  to  go  abroad  for  the  study  of  aesthetics)  a  man 
who  uses  the  eyes  of  his  heart  may  find  here  also 
pretty  bits  of  what  may  be  called  the  social  pic- 
turesque, and  little  landscapes  over  which  that 
Indian-summer  atmosphere  of  the  Past  broods  as 
sweetly  and  tenderly  as  over  a  Roman  ruin.  Let 
us  look  at  the  Cambridge  of  thirty  years  since. 

The  seat  of  the  oldest  college  in  America,  it 
had,  of  course,  some  of  that  cloistered  quiet  which 
characterizes  all  university  towns.  Even  now  deli- 
cately-thoughtful A.  H.  C.  tells  me  that  he  finds  in 
its  intellectual  atmosphere  a  repose  which  recalls 
that  of  grand  old  Oxford.  But,  underlying  this,  it 
had  an  idiosyncrasy  of  its  own.  Boston  was  not 
yet  a  city,  and  Cambridge  was  still  a  country  vil- 
lage, with  its  own  habits  and  traditions,  not  yet  feel- 
ing too  strongly  the  force  of  suburban  gravitation. 


54        CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY  YEARS  AGO 

Approaching  it  from  the  west  by  what  was  then 
called  the  New  Road  (so  called  no  longer,  for  we 
change  our  names  as  readily  as  thieves,  to  the 
great  detriment  of  all  historical  association),  you 
would  pause  on  the  brow  of  Symonds'  Hill  to  enjoy 
a  view  singularly  soothing  and  placid.  In  front  of 
you  lay  the  town,  tufted  with  elms,  lindens,  and 
horse-chestnuts,  which  had  seen  Massachusetts  a 
colony,  and  were  fortunately  unable  to  emigrate 
with  the  Tories  by  whom,  or  by  whose  fathers,  they 
were  planted.  Over  it  rose  the  noisy  belfry  of  the 
College,  the  square,  brown  tower  of  the  church,  and 
the  slim,  yellow  spire  of  the  parish  meeting-house, 
by  no  means  ungraceful,  and  then  an  invariable 
characteristic  of  New  England  religious  architec- 
ture. On  your  right,  the  Charles  slipped  smoothly 
through  green  and  purple  salt-meadows,  darkened, 
here  and  there,  with  the  blossoming  black-grass  as 
with  a  stranded  cloud-shadow.  Over  these  marshes, 
level  as  water,  but  without  its  glare,  and  with  softer 
and  more  soothing  gradations  of  perspective,  the 
eye  was  carried  to  a  horizon  of  softly-rounded  hills. 
To  your  left  hand,  upon  the  Old  Road,  you  saw 
some  half-dozen  dignified  old  houses  of  the  colonial 
time,  all  comfortably  fronting  southward.  If  it 
were  early  June,  the  rows  of  horse-chestnuts  along 
the  fronts  of  these  houses  showed,  through  every 
crevice  of  their  dark  heap  of  foliage,  and  on  the 
end  of  every  drooping  limb,  a  cone  of  pearly  flow- 
ers, while  the  hill  behind  was  white  or  rosy  with 
the  crowding  blooms  of  various  fruit-trees.  There 
is  no  sound,  unless  a  horseman  clatters  over  the 


Cambridge  in  1824 


CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO         55 

loose  planks  of  the  bridge,  while  his  antipodal 
shadow  glides  silently  over  the  mirrored  bridge  be- 
low, or  unless, 

"  O  winged  rapture,  feathered  soul  of  spring, 
Blithe  voice  of  woods,  fields,  waters,  all  in  one, 
Pipe  blown  through  by  the  warm,  mild  breath  of  June 
Shepherding  her  white  flocks  of  woolly  clouds, 
The  bobolink  has  come,  and  climbs  the  wind 
With  rippling  wings  that  quiver  not  for  flight, 
But  only  joy,  or,  yielding  to  its  will, 
Runs  down,  a  brook  of  laughter,  through  the  air." 

Such  was  the  charmingly  rural  picture  which  he 
who,  thirty  years  ago,  went  eastward  over  Symonds' 
Hill  had  given  him  for  nothing,  to  hang  in  the 
Gallery  of  Memory.  But  we  are  a  city  now,  and 
Common  Councils  have  as  yet  no  notion  of  the  truth 
(learned  long  ago  by  many  a  European  hamlet) 
that  picturesqueness  adds  to  the  actual  money  value 
of  a  town.  To  save  a  few  dollars  in  gravel,  they 
have  cut  a  kind  of  dry  ditch  through  the  hill,  where 
you  suffocate  with  dust  in  summer,  or  flounder 
through  waist-deep  snow-drifts  in  winter,  with  no 
prospect  but  the  crumbling  earth-walls  on  either 
side.  The  landscape  was  carried  away  cart-load  by 
cart-load,  and,  dumped  down  on  the  roads,  forms  a 
part  of  that  unfathomable  pudding,  which  has,  I 
fear,  driven  many  a  teamster  and  pedestrian  to  the 
use  of  phrases  not  commonly  found  in  English  dic- 
tionaries. 

We  called  it  "the  Village"  then  (I  speak  of 
Old  Cambridge),  and  it  was  essentially  an  English 
village,  quiet,  unspeculative,  without  enterprise,  suf- 
ficing to  itself,  and  only  showing  such  differences 


56         CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY   YEARS  AGO 

from  the  original  type  as  the  public  school  and  the 
system  of  town  government  might  superinduce.  A 
few  houses,  chiefly  old,  stood  around  the  bare 
Common,  with  ample  elbow-room,  and  old  women, 
capped  and  spectacled,  still  peered  through  the 
same  windows  from  which  they  had  watched  Lord 
Percy's  artillery  rumble  by  to  Lexington,  or  caught 
a  glimpse  of  the  handsome  Virginia  General  who 
had  come  to  wield  our  homespun  Saxon  chivalry. 
People  were  still  living  who  regretted  the  late  un- 
happy separation  from  the  mother  island,  who  had 
seen  no  gentry  since  the  Vassalls  went,  and  who 
thought  that  Boston  had  ill  kept  the  day  of  her 
patron  saint,  Botolph,  on  the  17th  of  June,  1775. 
The  hooks  were  to  be  seen  in  Massachusetts  Hall 
from  which  had  swung  the  hammocks  of  Burgoyne's 
captive  redcoats.  If  memory  does  not  deceive  me, 
women  still  washed  clothes  in  the  town  spring,  clear 
as  that  of  Bandusia.  One  coach  sufficed  for  all  the 
travel  to  the  metropolis.  Commencement  had  not 
ceased  to  be  the  great  holiday  of  the  Puritan  Com- 
monwealth, and  a  fitting  one  it  was, — the  festival 
of  Santa  Scholastica,  whose  triumphal  path  one 
may  conceive  strewn  with  leaves  of  spelling-book 
instead  of  bay.  The  students  (scholars  they  were 
called  then)  wore  their  sober  uniform,  not  osten- 
tatiously distinctive  or  capable  of  rousing  demo- 
cratic envy,  and  the  old  lines  of  caste  were  blurred 
rather  than  rubbed  out,  as  servitor  was  softened 
into  beneficiary.  The  Spanish  king  felt  sure  that 
the  gesticulating  student  was  either  mad  or  reading 
Don  Quixote,  and  if,  in  those  days,  you  met  a  youth 


CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO        57 

swinging  his  arms  and  talking  to  himself,  you  might 
conclude  that  he  was  either  a  lunatic  or  one  who 
was  to  appear  in  a  "part"  at  the  next  Exhibition 
or  Commencement.  A  favorite  place  for  the  re- 
hearsal of  these  orations  was  the  retired  amphi- 
theatre of  the  Gravel-pit,  perched  unregarded  on 
whose  dizzy  edge,  I  have  heard  many  a  burst  of 
plusquam  Ciceronian  eloquence,  and  (often  re- 
peated)  the  regular  saluto  vos,  prcestantissimce 
&c.,  which  every  year  (with  a  glance  at  the  gal- 
lery) causes  a  flutter  among  the  fans  innocent 
of  Latin,  and  delights  to  applauses  of  conscious 
superiority  the  youth  almost  as  innocent  as  they. 
It  is  curious,  by  the  way,  to  note  how  plainly  one 
can  feel  the  pulse  of  self  in  the  plaudits  of  an  au- 
dience. At  a  political  meeting,  if  the  enthusiasm 
of  the  lieges  hang  fire,  it  may  be  exploded  at  once 
by  an  allusion  to  their  intelligence  or  patriotism ; 
and  at  a  literary  festival,  the  first  Latin  quotation 
draws  the  first  applause,  the  clapping  of  hands 
being  intended  as  a  tribute  to  our  own  familiarity 
with  that  sonorous  tongue,  and  not  at  all  as  an 
approval  of  the  particular  sentiment  conveyed  in  it. 
For  if  the  orator  should  say,  "Well  has  Tacitus 
remarked,  Americani  omnes  quadam  vi  natures 
furca  dignissimi"  it  would  be  all  the  same.  But 
the  Gravel-pit  was  patient,  if  irresponsive  ;  nor  did 
the  declaimer  always  fail  to  bring  down  the  house, 
bits  of  loosened  earth  falling  now  and  then  from 
the  precipitous  walls,  their  cohesion  perhaps  over- 
come by  the  vibrations  of  the  voice,  and  happily 
satirizing  the  effect  of  most  popular  discourses, 


58         CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY   YEARS  AGO 

which  prevail  rather  with  the  earthy  than  the  spir- 
itual part  of  the  hearer.  Was  it  possible  for  us  in 
those  days  to  conceive  of  a  greater  potentate  than 
the  President  of  the  University,  in  his  square  doc- 
tor's cap,  that  still  filially  recalled  Oxford  and 
Cambridge?  If  there  was  a  doubt,  it  was  sug- 
gested only  by  the  Governor,  and  even  by  him  on 
artillery-election  days  alone,  superbly  martial  with 
epaulets  and  buckskin  breeches,  and  bestriding  the 
war-horse,  promoted  to  that  solemn  duty  for  his 
tameness  and  steady  habits. 

Thirty  years  ago,  the  town  had  indeed  a  char- 
acter. Railways  and  omnibuses  had  not  rolled 
flat  all  little  social  prominences  and  peculiarities, 
making  every  man  as  much  a  citizen  everywhere  as 
at  home.  No  Charlestown  boy  could  come  to  our 
annual  festival  without  fighting  to  avenge  a  certain 
traditional  porcine  imputation  against  the  inhab- 
itants of  that  historic  spot,  to  which  our  youth  gave 
vent  in  fanciful  imitations  of  the  dialect  of  the  sty, 
or  derisive  shouts  of  "  Charlestown  hogs !  "  The 
penny  newspaper  had  not  yet  silenced  the  tripod 
of  the  barber,  oracle  of  news.  Everybody  knew 
everybody,  and  all  about  everybody,  and  village 
wit,  whose  high  'change  was  around  the  little  mar- 
ket-house in  the  town  square,  had  labelled  every 
more  marked  individuality  with  nicknames  that 
clung  like  burs.  Things  were  established  then,  and 
men  did  not  run  through  all  the  figures  on  the  dial 
of  society  so  swiftly  as  now,  when  hurry  and  com- 
petition seem  to  have  quite  unhung  the  modulating 
pendulum  of  steady  thrift  and  competent  train- 


CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY  YEARS  AGO        59 

ing.  Some  slow-minded  persons  even  followed  their 
father's  trade,  —  a  humiliating  spectacle,  rarer 
every  day.  We  had  our  established  loafers,  to- 
pers, proverb-mongers,  barber,  parson,  nay,  post- 
master, whose  tenure  was  for  life.  The  great  polit- 
ical engine  did  not  then  come  down  at  regular 
quadrennial  intervals,  like  a  nail-cutting  machine, 
to  make  all  official  lives  of  a  standard  length,  and 
to  generate  lazy  and  intriguing  expectancy.  Life 
flowed  in  recognized  channels,  narrower  perhaps, 
but  with  all  the  more  individuality  and  force. 

There  was  but  one  white -and -yellow -washer, 
whose  own  cottage,  fresh -gleaming  every  June 
through  grape-vine  and  creeper,  was  his  only  sign 
and  advertisement.  He  was  said  to  possess  a  secret, 
which  died  with  him  like  that  of  Luca  della  E-ob- 
bia,  and  certainly  conceived  all  colors  but  white 
and  yellow  to  savor  of  savagery,  civilizing  the  stems 
of  his  trees  annually  with  liquid  lime,  and  meditat- 
ing how  to  extend  that  candent  baptism  even  to 
the  leaves.  His  pie-plants  (the  best  in  town),  com- 
pulsory monastics,  blanched  under  barrels,  each 
in  his  little  hermitage,  a  vegetable  Gertosa.  His 
fowls,  his  ducks,  his  geese,  could  not  show  so 
much  as  a  gray  feather  among  them,  and  he  would 
have  given  a  year's  earnings  for  a  white  peacock. 
The  flowers  which  decked  his  little  door-yard 
were  whitest  China-asters  and  goldenest  sunflowers, 
which  last,  backsliding  from  their  traditional  Par- 
see  faith,  used  to  puzzle  us  urchins  not  a  little  by 
staring  brazenly  every  way  except  towards  the  sun. 
Celery,  too,  he  raised,  whose  virtue  is  its  paleness, 


60         CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY  YEARS  AGO 

and  the  silvery  onion,  and  turnip,  which,  though 
outwardly  conforming  to  the  green  heresies  of  sum- 
mer, nourish  a  purer  faith  subterraneously,  like 
early  Christians  in  the  catacombs.  In  an  obscure 
corner  grew  the  sanguine  beet,  tolerated  only  for 
its  usefulness  in  allaying  the  asperities  of  Satur- 
day's salt-fish.  He  loved  winter  better  than  sum- 
mer, because  Nature  then  played  the  whitewasher, 
and  challenged  with  her  snows  the  scarce  inferior 
purity  of  his  overalls  and  neck-cloth.  I  fancy  that 
he  never  rightly  liked  Commencement,  for  bring- 
ing so  many  black  coats  together.  He  founded 
no  school.  Others  might  essay  his  art,  and  were 
allowed  to  try  their  prentice  hands  on  fences  and 
the  like  coarse  subjects,  but  the  ceiling  of  every 
housewife  waited  on  the  leisure  of  Newman  (ich- 
neumon the  students  called  him  for  his  diminutive- 
ness),  nor  would  consent  to  other  brush  than  his. 
There  was  also  but  one  brewer,  —  Lewis,  who  made 
the  village  beer,  both  spruce  and  ginger,  a  grave 
and  amiable  Ethiopian,  making  a  discount  always 
to  the  boys,  and  wisely,  for  they  were  his  chiefest 
patrons.  He  wheeled  his  whole  stock  in  a  white- 
roofed  handcart,  on  whose  front  a  signboard  pre- 
sented at  either  end  an  insurrectionary  bottle  ;  yet 
insurgent  after  no  mad  Gallic  fashion,  but  soberly 
and  Saxonly  discharging  itself  into  the  restraining 
formulary  of  a  tumbler,  symbolic  of  orderly  pre- 
scription. The  artist  had  struggled  manfully  with 
the  difficulties  of  his  subject,  but  had  not  succeeded 
so  well  that  we  did  not  often  debate  in  which  of 
the  twin  bottles  Spruce  was  typified,  and  in  which 


CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO         61 

Ginger.  We  always  believed  that  Lewis  mentally 
distinguished  between  them,  but  by  some  peculiar- 
ity occult  to  exoteric  eyes.  This  ambulatory  chapel 
of  the  Bacchus  that  gives  the  colic,  but  not  inebri- 
ates, only  appeared  at  the  Commencement  holidays, 
and  the  lad  who  bought  of  Lewis  laid  out  his 
money  well,  getting  respect  as  well  as  beer,  three 
sirs  to  every  glass,  —  "  Beer,  sir  ?  yes,  sir :  spruce 
or  ginger,  sir  ? "  I  can  yet  recall  the  innocent 
pride  with  which  I  walked  away  after  that  some- 
what risky  ceremony,  (for  a  bottle  sometimes  blew 
up,)  dilated  not  alone  with  carbonic  acid  gas,  but 
with  the  more  ethereal  fixed  air  of  that  titular  flat- 
tery. Nor  was  Lewis  proud.  When  he  tried  his 
fortunes  in  the  capital  on  Election-days,  and  stood 
amid  a  row  of  rival  venders  in  the  very  flood  of 
custom,  he  never  forgot  his  small  fellow-citizens, 
but  welcomed  them  with  an  assuring  smile,  and 
served  them  with  the  first. 

The  barber's  shop  was  a  museum,  scarce  second 
to  the  larger  one  of  Greenwood  in  the  metropolis. 
The  boy  who  was  to  be  clipped  there  was  always 
accompanied  to  the  sacrifice  by  troops  of  friends, 
who  thus  inspected  the  curiosities  gratis.  While 
the  watchful  eye  of  R.  wandered  to  keep  in  check 
these  rather  unscrupulous  explorers,  the  unpaus- 
ing  shears  would  sometimes  overstep  the  bound- 
aries of  strict  tonsorial  prescription,  and  make  a 
notch  through  which  the  phrenological  develop- 
ments could  be  distinctly  seen.  As  Michael  An- 
gelo's  design  was  modified  by  the  shape  of  his 
block,  so  R.,  rigid  in  artistic  proprieties,,  would  con- 


62         CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY   YEARS  AGO 

trive  to  give  an  appearance  of  design  to  this  aber- 
ration, by  making  it  the  key-note  to  his  work, 
and  reducing  the  whole  head  to  an  appearance  of 
premature  baldness.  What  a  charming  place  it 
was?  —  how  full  of  wonder  and  delight !  The  sun- 
ny little  room,  fronting  southwest  upon  the  Com- 
mon, rang  with  canaries  and  Java  sparrows,  nor 
were  the  familiar  notes  of  robin,  thrush,  and  bobo- 
link wanting.  A  large  white  cockatoo  harangued 
vaguely,  at  intervals,  in  what  we  believed  (on  R.'s 
authority)  to  be  the  Hottentot  language.  He  had 
an  unveracious  air,  but  in  what  inventions  of  for- 
mer grandeur  he  was  indulging,  what  sweet  South- 
African  Argos  he  was  remembering,  what  tropi- 
cal heats  and  giant  trees  by  unconjectured  rivers, 
known  only  to  the  wallowing  hippopotamus,  we 
could  only  guess  at.  The  walls  were  covered  with 
curious  old  Dutch  prints,  beaks  of  albatross  and 
penguin,  and  whales'  teeth  fantastically  engraved. 
There  was  Frederick  the  Great,  with  head  drooped 
plottingly,  and  keen  sidelong  glance  from  under 
the  three-cornered  hat.  There  hung  Bonaparte, 
too,  the  long-haired,  haggard  general  of  Italy,  his 
eyes  sombre  with  prefigured  destiny ;  and  there 
was  his  island  grave ;  —  the  dream  and  the  fulfil- 
ment. Good  store  of  sea-fights  there  was  also  ; 
above  all,  Paul  Jones  in  the  Bonhomme  Richard : 
the  smoke  rolling  courteously  to  leeward,  that  we 
might  see  him  dealing  thunderous  wreck  to  the  two 
hostile  vessels,  each  twice  as  large  as  his  own,  and 
the  reality  of  the  scene  corroborated  by  streaks  of 
red  paint  leaping  from  the  mouth  of  every  gun. 


CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY   YEARS  AGO        63 

Suspended  over  the  fireplace,  with  the  curling-tongs, 
were  an  Indian  bow  and  arrows,  and  in  the  cor- 
ners of  the  room  stood  New  Zealand  paddles  and 
war-clubs,  quaintly  carved.  The  model  of  a  ship 
in  glass  we  variously  estimated  to  be  worth  from  a 
hundred  to  a  thousand  dollars,  R.  rather  favoring 
the  higher  valuation,  though  never  distinctly  com- 
mitting himself.  Among  these  wonders,  the  only 
suspicious  one  was  an  Indian  tomahawk,  which  had 
too  much  the  peaceful  look  of  a  shingling-hatchet. 
Did  any  rarity  enter  the  town,  it  gravitated  natu- 
rally to  these  walls,  to  the  very  nail  that  waited  to 
receive  it,  and  where,  the  day  after  its  accession,  it 
seemed  to  have  hung  a  lifetime.  We  always  had 
a  theory  that  R.  was  immensely  rich,  (how  could 
he  possess  so  much  and  be  otherwise  ?)  and  that  he 
pursued  his  calling  from  an  amiable  eccentricity. 
He  was  a  conscientious  artist,  and  never  submitted 
it  to  the  choice  of  his  victim  whether  he  would  be 
perfumed  or  not.  Faithfully  was  the  bottle  shaken 
and  the  odoriferous  mixture  rubbed  in,  a  fact  red- 
olent to  the  whole  school-room  in  the  afternoon. 
Sometimes  the  persuasive  toiisor  would  impress 
one  of  the  attendant  volunteers,  and  reduce  his 
poll  to  shoe-brush  crispness,  at  cost  of  the  reluctant 
iiinepence  hoarded  for  Fresh  Pond  and  the  next 
half-holiday.  So  purely  indigenous  was  our  popu- 
lation then,  that  R.  had  a  certain  exotic  charm,  a 
kind  of  game  flavor,  by  being  a  Dutchman. 

Shall  the  two  groceries  want  their  vates  sacer, 
where  E.  &  W.  I.  goods  and  country  prodooce 
were  sold  with  an  energy  mitigated  by  the  quiet 


64         CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO 

genius  of  the  place,  and  where  strings  of  urchins 
waited,  each  with  cent  in  hand,  for  the  unweighed 
dates  (thus  giving  an  ordinary  business  transaction 
all  the  excitement  of  a  lottery),  and  buying,  not 
only  that  cloying  sweetness,  but  a  dream  also  of 
Egypt,  and  palm-trees,  and  Arabs,  in  which  vision 
a  print  of  the  Pyramids  in  our  geography  tyran- 
nized like  that  taller  thought  of  Cowper's  ? 

At  one  of  these  the  unwearied  students  used  to 
ply  a  joke  handed  down  from  class  to  class.  Enter 
A,  and  asks  gravely,  "  Have  you  any  sour  apples, 
Deacon  ?  " 

"  Well,  no,  I  have  n't  any  just  now  that  are  ex- 
actly sour ;  but  there  's  the  bell-flower  apple,  and 
folks  that  like  a  sour  apple  generally  like  that." 
(Exit  A.) 

Enter  B.  "Have  you  any  sweet  apples,  Dea- 
con?" 

"  Well,  no,  I  have  n't  any  just  now  that  are  ex- 
actly sweet ;  but  there  's  the  bell-flower  apple,  and 
folks  that  like  a  sweet  apple  generally  like  that." 
(Exit  B.} 

There  is  not  even  a  tradition  of  any  one's  ever 
having  turned  the  wary  Deacon's  flank,  and  his 
Laodicean  apples  persisted  to  the  end,  neither  one 
thing  nor  another.  Or  shall  the  two  town-consta- 
bles be  forgotten,  in  whom  the  law  stood  worthily 
and  amply  embodied,  fit  either  of  them  to  fill  the 
uniform  of  an  English  beadle?  Grim  and  silent 
as  Ninevite  statues  they  stood  on  each  side  of  the 
meeting-house  door  at  Commencement,  propped  by 
long  staves  of  blue  and  red,  on  which  the  Indian 


CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY   YEARS  AGO        65 

with  bow  and  arrow,  and  the  mailed  arm  with  the 
sword,  hinted  at  the  invisible  sovereignty  of  the 
state  ready  to  reinforce  them,  as 

"For  Achilles'  portrait  stood  a  spear 
Grasped  in  an  armed  hand." 

Stalwart  and  rubicund  men  they  were,  second  only, 
if  second,  to  S.,  champion  of  the  county,  and  not 
incapable  of  genial  unbendings  when  the  fasces 
were  laid  aside.  One  of  them  still  survives  in 
octogenarian  vigor,  the  Herodotus  of  village  and 
college  legend,  and  may  it  be  long  ere  he  depart, 
to  carry  with  him  the  pattern  of  a  courtesy,  now, 
alas!  old-fashioned,  but  which  might  profitably 
make  part  of  the  instruction  of  our  youth  among 
the  other  humanities !  Long  may  R.  M.  be  spared 
to  us,  so  genial,  so  courtly,  the  last  man  among  us 
who  will  ever  know  how  to  lift  a  hat  with  the  nice 
graduation  of  social  distinctions.  Something  of  a 
Jeremiah  now,  he  bewails  the  decline  of  our  man- 
ners. "  My  children,"  he  says,  "  say,  '  Yes  sir,' 
and  '  No  sir ' ;  my  grandchildren,  '  Yes '  and  '  No ' ; 
and  I  am  every  day  expecting  to  hear  '  D — n  your 
eyes ! '  for  an  answer  when  I  ask  a  service  of  my 
great-grandchildren.  Why,  sir,  I  can  remember 
when  more  respect  was  paid  to  Governor  Hancock's 
lackey  at  Commencement,  than  the  Governor  and 
all  his  suite  get  now."  M.  is  one  of  those  invalu- 
able men  who  remember  your  grandfather,  and 
value  you  accordingly. 

In  those  days  the  population  was  almost  wholly 
without  foreign  admixture.  Two  Scotch  gardeners 
there  were,  —  Rule,  whose  daughter  (glimpsed  per- 


66         CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY   YEARS  AGO 

haps  at  church,  or  possibly  the  mere  Mrs.  Harris  of 
fancy)  the  students  nicknamed  Anarchy  or  Miss 
Rule,  —  and  later  Fraser,  whom  whiskey  sublimed 
into  a  poet,  full  of  bloody  histories  of  the  Forty- 
twa,  and  showing  an  imaginary  French  bullet, 
sometimes  in  one  leg,  sometimes  in  the  other,  and 
sometimes,  toward  nightfall,  in  both.  He  asserted 
that  he  had  been  at  Coruna,  calling  it  by  its 
archaic  name  of  the  Groyne,  and  thus  raising 
doubts  in  the  mind  of  the  young  listener  who  could 
find  no  such  place  on  his  map.  With  this  claim 
to  a  military  distinction  he  adroitly  contrived  to 
mingle  another  to  a  natural  one,  asserting  double 
teeth  all  round  his  jaws,  and,  having  thus  created 
two  sets  of  doubts,  silenced  both  at  once  by  a  single 
demonstration,  displaying  the  grinders  to  the  con- 
fusion of  the  infidel. 

The  old  court-house  stood  then  upon  the  square. 
It  has  shrunk  back  out  of  sight  now,  and  students 
box  and  fence  where  Parsons  once  laid  down  the 
law,  and  Ames  and  Dexter  showed  their  skill  in 
the  fence  of  argument.  Times  have  changed,  and 
manners,  since  Chief  Justice  Dana  (father  of  Rich- 
ard the  First,  and  grandfather  of  Richard  the 
Second)  caused  to  be  arrested  for  contempt  of 
court  a  butcher  who  had  come  in  without  a  coat  to 
witness  the  administration  of  his  country's  laws, 
and  who  thus  had  his  curiosity  exemplarily  grati- 
fied. Times  have  changed  also  since  the  cellar 
beneath  it  was  tenanted  by  the  twin-brothers  Snow. 
Oyster  men  were  they  indeed,  silent  in  their  sub- 
terranean burrow,  and  taking  the  ebbs  and  flows 


CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO        67 

of  custom  with  bivalvian  serenity.  Careless  of  the 
months  with  an  R  in  them,  the  maxim  of  Snow 
(for  we  knew  them  but  as  a  unit)  was,  "  When 
'ysters  are  good,  they  air  good ;  and  when  they 
ain't,  they  is  n't"  Grecian  F.  (may  his  shadow 
never  be  less !)  tells  this,  his  great  laugh  expected 
all  the  while  from  deep  vaults  of  chest,  and  then 
coming  in  at  the  close,  hearty,  contagious,  mount- 
ing with  the  measured  tread  of  a  jovial  but  stately 
butler  who  brings  ancientest  goodfellowship  from 
exhaustless  bins,  and  enough,  without  other  sauce, 
to  give  a  flavor  of  stalled  ox  to  a  dinner  of  herbs. 
Let  me  preserve  here  an  anticipatory  elegy  upon 
the  Snows,  written  years  ago  by  some  nameless 
college  rhymer. 

DIFFUGERE  NIVES. 

Here  lies,  or  lie,  —  decide  the  question,  you, 

If  they  were  two  in  one  or  one  in  two.  — 

P.  &  S.  Snow,  whose  memory  shall  not  fade, 

Castor  and  Pollux  of  the  oyster-trade : 

Hatched  from  one  egg,  at  once  the  shell  they  burst, 

(The  last,  perhaps,  a  P.  S.  to  the  first,) 

So  homoousian  both  in  look  and  soul, 

So  undiscernibly  a  single  whole, 

That  whether  P.  was  S.,  or  S.  was  P., 

Surpassed  all  skill  in  etymology ; 

One  kept  the  shop  at  once,  and  all  we  know 

Is  that  together  they  were  the  Great  Snow, 

A  snow  not  deep,  yet  with  a  crust  so  thick 

It  never  melted  to  the  son  of  Tick ; 

Perpetual  ?  nay,  our  region  was  too  low, 

Too  warm,  too  southern,  for  perpetual  Snow ; 

Still,  like  fair  Leda's  sons,  to  whom  't  was  given 

To  take  their  turns  in  Hades  and  in  Heaven, 

Our  Dioscuri  new  would  bravely  share 

The  cellar's  darkness  and  the  upper  air ; 


68         CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY   YEARS  AGO 

Twice  every  year  would  each  the  shades  escape, 

And,  like  a  sea-bird,  seek  the  wave-washed  Cape, 

Where  (Rumor  voiced)  one  spouse  sufficed  for  both ; 

No  bigamist,  for  she  upon  her  oath, 

Unskilled  iu  letters,  could  not  make  a  guess 

At  any  difference  twixt  P.  and  S-  — 

A  thing  not  marvellous,  since  Fame  agrees 

They  were  as  little  different  as  two  peas, 

And  she,  like  Paris,  when  his  Helen  laid 

Her  hand  'mid  snows  from  Ida's  top  conveyed 

To  cool  their  wine  of  Chios,  could  not  know, 

Between  those  rival  candors,  which  was  Snow. 

Whiche'er  behind  the  counter  chanced  to  be 

Oped  oysters  oft,  his  clam-shells  seldom  he ; 

If  e'er  he  laughed,  'twas  with  no  loud  guffaw, 

The  fun  warmed  through  him  with  a  gradual  thaw : 

The  nicer  shades  of  wit  were  not  his  gift, 

Nor  was  it  hard  to  sound  Snow's  simple  drift; 

His  were  plain  jokes,  that  many  a  time  before 

Had  set  his  tarry  messmates  in  a  roar, 

When  floundering  cod  beslimed  the  deck's  wet  planks,  — 

The  humorous  specie  of  Newfoundland  Banks. 

But  Snow  is  gone,  and,  let  us  hope,  sleeps  well, 
Buried  (his  last  breath  asked  it)  in  a  shell ; 
Fate  with  an  oyster-knife  sawed  off  his  thread. 
And  planted  him  upon  his  latest  bed. 

Him  on  the  Stygian  shore  my  fancy  sees 
Noting  choice  shoals  for  oyster  colonies, 
Or,  at  a  board  stuck  full  of  ghostly  forks, 
Opening  for  practice  visionary  Yorks. 
And  whither  he  has  gone,  may  we  too  go,  — 
Since  no  hot  place  were  fit  for  keeping  Snow ! 

Jam  satis  nivis. 

Cambridge  has  long  had  its  port,  but  the  greater 
part  of  its  maritime  trade  was,  thirty  years  ago, 
intrusted  to  a  single  Argo,  the  sloop  Harvard, 
which  belonged  to  the  College,  and  made  annual 


CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO        69 

voyages  to  that  vague  Orient  known  as  Down  East, 
bringing  back  the  wood  that,  in  those  days,  gave  to 
winter  life  at  Harvard  a  crackle  and  a  cheerfulness, 
for  the  loss  of  which  the  greater  warmth  of  an- 
thracite hardly  compensates.  New  England  life,  to 
be  genuine,  must  have  in  it  some  sentiment  of  the 
sea,  —  it  was  this  instinct  that  printed  the  device 
of  the  pine-tree  on  the  old  money  and  the  old  flag, 
—  and  these  periodic  ventures  of  the  sloop  Harvard 
made  the  old  Viking  fibre  vibrate  in  the  hearts  of 
all  the  village  boys.  What  a  perspective  of  mystery 
and  adventure  did  her  sailing  open  to  us !  With 
what  pride  did  we  hail  her  return !  She  was  our 
scholiast  upon  Robinson  Crusoe  and  the  mutiny  of 
the  Bounty.  Her  captain  still  lords  it  over  our 
memories,  the  greatest  sailor  that  ever  sailed  the 
seas,  and  we  should  not  look  at  Sir  John  Franklin 
himself  with  such  admiring  interest  as  that  with 
which  we  enhaloed  some  larger  boy  who  had  made 
a  voyage  in  her,  and  had  come  back  without  braces 
(gallowses  we  called  them)  to  his  trousers,  and 
squirting  ostentatiously  the  juice  of  that  weed  which 
still  gave  him  little  private  returns  of  something 
very  like  sea-sickness.  All  our  shingle  vessels  were 
shaped  and  rigged  by  her,  who  was  our  glass  of 
naval  fashion  and  our  mould  of  aquatic  form.  We 
had  a  secret  and  wild  delight  in  believing  that  she 
carried  a  gun,  and  imagined  her  sending  grape  and 
canister  among  the  treacherous  savages  of  Oldtown. 
Inspired  by  her  were  those  first  essays  at  navigation 
on  the  Winthrop  duck-pond,  of  the  plucky  boy  who 
was  afterwards  to  serve  two  famous  years  before 
the  mast. 


70        CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO 

The  greater  part  of  what  is  now  Cambridgeport 
was  then  (in  the  native  dialect)  a  huckleberry 
pastur.  Woods  were  not  wanting  on  its  outskirts, 
of  pine,  and  oak,  and  maple,  and  the  rarer  tupelo 
with  downward  limbs.  Its  veins  did  not  draw 
their  blood  from  the  quiet  old  heart  of  the  village, 
but  it  had  a  distinct  being  of  its  own,  and  was 
rather  a  great  caravansary  than  a  suburb.  The 
chief  feature  of  the  place  was  its  inns,  of  which 
there  were  five,  with  vast  barns  and  court-yards, 
which  the  railroad  was  to  make  as  silent  and  de- 
serted as  the  palaces  of  Nimroud.  Great  white- 
topped  wagons,  each  drawn  by  double  files  of  six 
or  eight  horses,  with  its  dusty  bucket  swinging  from 
the  hinder  axle,  and  its  grim  bull-dog  trotting 
silent  underneath,  or  in  midsummer  panting  on  the 
lofty  perch  beside  the  driver,  (how  elevated  thither 
baffled  conjecture,)  brought  all  the  wares  and  pro- 
ducts of  the  country  to  their  mart  and  seaport  in 
Boston.  These  filled  the  inn-yards,  or  were  ranged 
side  by  side  under  broad-roofed  sheds,  and  far  into 
the  night  the  mirth  of  their  lusty  drivers  clamored 
from  the  red-curtained  bar-room,  while  the  single 
lantern,  swaying  to  and  fro  in  the  black  cavern  of 
the  stables,  made  a  Rembrandt  of  the  group  of 
ostlers  and  horses  below.  There  were,  beside  the 
taverns,  some  huge  square  stores  where  groceries 
were  sold,  some  houses,  by  whom  or  why  inhabited 
was  to  us  boys  a  problem,  and,  on  the  edge  of  the 
marsh,  a  currier's  shop,  where,  at  high  tide,  on  a 
floating  platform,  men  were  always  beating  skins 
in  a  way  to  remind  one  of  Don  Quixote's  fulling- 


CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY   YEARS  AGO        71 

mills.  Nor  did  these  make  all  the  Port.  As  there 
is  always  a  Coming  Man  who  never  comes,  so  there 
is  a  man  who  always  comes  (it  may  be  only  a 
quarter  of  an  hour)  too  early.  This  man,  so  far 
as  the  Port  is  concerned,  was  Rufus  Davenport. 
Looking  at  the  marshy  flats  of  Cambridge,  and 
considering  their  nearness  to  Boston,  he  resolved 
that  there  should  grow  up  a  suburban  Venice. 
Accordingly,  the  marshes  were  bought,  canals  were 
dug,  ample  for  the  commerce  of  both  Indies,  and 
four  or  five  rows  of  brick  houses  were  built  to  meet 
the  first  wants  of  the  wading  settlers  who  were  ex- 
pected to  rush  in  —  WHENCE  ?  This  singular  ques- 
tion had  never  occurred  to  the  enthusiastic  projec- 
tor. There  are  laws  which  govern  human  migrations 
quite  beyond  the  control  of  the  speculator,  as  many 
a  man  with  desirable  building-lots  has  discovered 
to  his  cost.  Why  mortal  men  will  pay  more  for  a 
chess-board  square  in  that  swamp,  than  for  an  acre 
on  the  breezy  upland  close  by,  who  shall  say  ?  And 
again,  why,  having  shown  such  a  passion  for  your 
swamp,  they  are  so  coy  of  mine,  who  shall  say? 
Not  certainly  any  one  who,  like  Davenport,  had  got 
up  too  early  for  his  generation.  If  we  could  only 
carry  that  slow,  imperturbable  old  clock  of  Oppor- 
tunity, that  never  strikes  a  second  too  soon  or  too 
late,  in  our  fobs,  and  push  the  hands  forward  as 
we  can  those  of  our  watches !  With  a  foreseeing 
economy  of  space  which  now  seems  ludicrous,  the 
roofs  of  this  forlorn-hope  of  houses  were  made  flat, 
that  the  swarming  population  might  have  where 
to  dry  their  clothes.  But  A.  u.  c.  30  showed  the 


72         CAMBRIDGE    THIRTl     YEARS  AGO 

same  view  as  A.  U.  C.  1,  —  only  that  the  brick 
blocks  looked  as  if  they  lu  J  beeu  struck  by  a 
malaria.  The  dull  weed  upholstered  the  decaying 
wharves,  and  the  only  freight  +hat  heaped  them 
was  the  kelp  and  eel-grass  left  by  higher  floods. 
Instead  of  a  Venice,  behold  a  Torzelo !  The  un- 
fortunate projector  took  to  the  last  refuge  of  the 
unhappy  —  book-making,  and  bored  the  reluctant 
public  with  what  he  called  a  right-aim  Testament, 
prefaced  by  a  recommendation  from  General  Jack- 
son, who  perhaps,  from  its  title,  took  it  for  some 
treatise  on  ball-practice. 

But  even  Cambridgeport,  my  dear  Storg,  did 
not  want  associations  poetic  and  venerable.  The 
stranger  who  took  the  "  Hourly "  at  Old  Cam- 
bridge, if  he  were  a  physiognomist  and  student  of 
character,  might  perhaps  have  had  his  curiosity  ex- 
cited by  a  person  who  mounted  the  coach  at  the 
Port.  So  refined  was  his  whole  appearance,  so 
fastidiously  neat  his  apparel,  —  but  with  a  neatness 
that  seemed  less  the  result  of  care  and  plan  than  a 
something  as  proper  to  the  man  as  whiteness  to  the 
lily,  —  that  you  would  have  at  once  classed  him 
with  those  individuals,  rarer  than  great  captains 
and  almost  as  rare  as  great  poets,  whom  Nature 
sends  into  the  world  to  fill  the  arduous  office  of 
Gentleman.  Were  you  ever  emperor  of  that  Bara- 
taria  which  under  your  peaceful  sceptre  would 
present,  of  course,  a  model  of  government,  this 
remarkable  person  should  be  Duke  of  Bienseance 
and  Master  of  Ceremonies.  There  are  some  men 
whom  destiny  has  endowed  with  the  faculty  of 


CAMBRIDGE  ^THIRTY    YEARS  AGO        73 

external  neatness,  whose  clothes  are  repellent  of 
dust  and  mud  whos«/>  tin  withering  white  neck-cloths 
persevere  to  the  day's  end,  unappeasably  seeing  the 
sun  go  down  u'^on  their  starch,  and  whose  linen 
makes  you  fancy  them  heirs  in  the  maternal  line  to 
the  instincts  of  all  the  washerwomen  from  Eve 
downward.  There  are  others  whose  inward  natures 
possess  this  fatal  cleanness,  incapable  of  moral  dirt- 
spot.  You  are  not  long  in  discovering  that  the 
stranger  combines  in  himself  both  these  properties. 
A  nimbus  of  hair,  fine  as  an  infant's,  and  early 
white,  showing  refinement  of  organization  and  the 
predominance  of  the  spiritual  over  the  physical, 
undulated  and  floated  around  a  face  that  seemed 
like  pale  flame,  and  over  which  the  flitting  shades 
of  expression  chased  each  other,  fugitive  and  gleam- 
ing as  waves  upon  a  field  of  rye.  It  was  a  coun- 
tenance that,  without  any  beauty  of  feature,  was 
very  beautiful.  I  have  said  that  it  looked  like  pale 
flame,  and  can  find  no  other  words  for  the  impres- 
sion it  gave.  Here  was  a  man  all  soul,  his  body 
seeming  a  lamp  of  finest  clay,  whose  service  was  to 
feed  with  magic  oils,  rare  and  fragrant,  that  waver- 
ing fire  which  hovered  over  it.  You,  who  are  an 
adept  in  such  matters,  would  have  detected  in  the 
eyes  that  artist-look  which  seems  to  see  pictures 
ever  in  the  air,  and  which,  if  it  fall  on  you,  makes 
you  feel  as  if  all  the  world  were  a  gallery,  and 
yourself  the  rather  indifferent  Portrait  of  a  Gentle- 
man hung  therein.  As  the  stranger  brushes  by 
you  in  alighting,  you  detect  a  single  incongruity, 
—  a  smell  of  dead  tobacco- smoke.  You  ask  his 
name,  and  the  answer  is,  "  Mr.  Allston." 


74         CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY   YEARS  AGO 

"  Mr.  Allston !  "  and  you  resolve  to  note  down 
at  once  in  your  diary  every  look,  every  gesture, 
every  word  of  the  great  painter  ?  Not  in  the  least. 
You  have  the  true  Anglo-Norman  indifference,  and 
most  likely  never  think  of  him  again  till  you  hear 
that  one  of  his  pictures  has  sold  for  a  great  price, 
and  then  contrive  to  let  your  grandchildren  know 
twice  a  week  that  you  met  him  once  in  a  coach,  and 
that  he  said,  "  Excuse  me,  sir,"  in  a  very  Titian- 
esque  manner,  when  he  stumbled  over  your  toes  in 
getting  out.  Hitherto  Boswell  is  quite  as  unique 
as  Shakespeare.  The  country-gentleman,  journey- 
ing up  to  London,  inquires  of  Mistress  Davenant 
at  the  Oxford  inn  the  name  of  his  pleasant  com- 
panion of  the  night  before.  "  Master  Shakespeare, 
an't  please  your  worship."  And  the  Justice,  not 
without  a  sense  of  the  unbending,  says,  "Truly, 
a  merry  and  conceited  gentleman ! "  It  is  lucky 
for  the  peace  of  great  men  that  the  world  seldom 
finds  out  contemporaneously  who  its  great  men  are, 
or,  perhaps,  that  each  man  esteems  himself  the 
fortunate  he  who  shall  draw  the  lot  of  memory 
from  the  helmet  of  the  future.  Had  the  eyes  of 
some  Stratford  burgess  been  achromatic  telescopes, 
capable  of  a  perspective  of  two  hundred  years! 
But,  even  then,  would  not  his  record  have  been 
fuller  of  says  /'s  than  of  says  he's  ?  Neverthe- 
less, it  is  curious  to  consider  from  what  infinitely 
varied  points  of  view  we  might  form  our  estimate 
of  a  great  man's  character,  when  we  remember  that 
he  had  his  points  of  contast  with  the  butcher,  the 
baker,  and  the  candlestick-maker,  as  well  as  with 


CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO        75 

the  ingenious  A,  the  sublime  B,  and  the  Right 
Honorable  C.  If  it  be  true  that  no  man  ever  clean 
forgets  everything,  and  that  the  act  of  drowning 
(as  is  asserted)  forthwith  brightens  up  all  those 
o'er-rusted  impressions,  would  it  not  be  a  curious 
experiment,  if,  after  a  remarkable  person's  death, 
the  public,  eager  for  minutest  particulars,  should 
gather  together  all  who  had  ever  been  brought  into 
relations  with  him,  and,  submerging  them  to  the 
hair's-breadth  hitherward  of  the  drowning-point, 
subject  them  to  strict  cross-examination  by  the 
Humane  Society,  as  soon  as  they  become  conscious 
between  the  resuscitating  blankets  ?  All  of  us 
probably  have  brushed  against  destiny  in  the  street, 
have  shaken  hands  with  it,  fallen  asleep  with  it  in 
railway  carriages,  and  knocked  heads  with  it  in 
some  one  or  other  of  its  yet  unrecognized  incarna- 
tions. 

Will  it  seem  like  presenting  a  tract  to  a  colpor- 
teur, my  dear  Storg,  if  I  say  a  word  or  two  about 
an  artist  to  you  over  there  in  Italy  ?  Be  patient, 
and  leave  your  button  in  my  grasp  yet  a  little 
longer.  T.  G.  A.,  a  person  whose  opinion  is  worth 
having,  once  said  to  me,  that,  however  one's  notions 
might  be  modified  by  going  to  Europe,  one  always 
came  back  with  a  higher  esteem  for  Allston.  Cer- 
tainly he  is  thus  far  the  greatest  English  painter  of 
historical  subjects.  And  only  consider  how  strong 
must  have  been  the  artistic  bias  in  him,  to  have 
made  him  a  painter  at  all  under  the  circumstances. 
There  were  no  traditions  of  art,  so  necessary  for 
guidance  and  inspiration.  Blackburn,  Smibert, 


76         CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO 

Copley,  Trumbull,  Stuart,  —  it  was,  after  all,  but 
a  Brentford  sceptre  which  their  heirs  could  aspire 
to,  and  theirs  were  not  names  to  conjure  with,  like 
those  from  which  Fame,  as  through  a  silver  trum- 
pet, had  blown  for  three  centuries.  Copley  and 
Stuart  were  both  remarkable  men  ;  but  the  one 
painted  like  an  inspired  silk-mercer,  and  the  other, 
though  at  his  best  one  of  the  greatest  of  por- 
trait-painters, seems  sometimes  to  have  mixed  his 
colors  with  the  claret  of  which  he  and  his  genera- 
tion were  so  fond.  And  what  could  a  successful 
artist  hope  for,  at  that  time,  beyond  the  mere 
wages  of  his  work?  His  picture  would  hang  in 
cramped  back-parlors,  between  deadly  cross-fires 
of  lights,  sure  of  the  garret  or  the  auction-room  ere- 
long, in  a  country  where  the  nomad  population 
carry  no  household  gods  with  them  but  their  five 
wits  and  their  ten  fingers.  As  a  race,  we  care  noth- 
ing about  Art ;  but  the  Puritan  and  the  Quaker  are 
the  only  Englishmen  who  have  had  pluck  enough 
to  confess  it.  If  it  were  surprising  that  Allston 
should  have  become  a  painter  at  all,  how  almost 
miraculous  that  he  should  have  been  a  great  and 
original  one !  I  call  him  original  deliberately, 
because,  though  his  school  be  essentially  Italian,  it 
is  of  less  consequence  where  a  man  buys  his  tools, 
than  what  use  he  makes  of  them.  Enough  Eng- 
lish artists  went  to  Italy  and  came  back  painting 
history  in  a  very  Anglo-Saxon  manner,  and  creat- 
ing a  school  as  melodramatic  as  the  French,  with- 
out its  perfection  in  technicalities.  But  Allston 
carried  thither  a  nature  open  on  the  southern  side, 


CAMBRIDGE  THIRTY  YEARS  AGO        77 

and  brought  it  back  so  steeped  in  rich  Italian  sun- 
shine that  the  east  winds  (whether  physical  or  in- 
tellectual) of  Boston  and  the  dusts  of  Cambridge- 
port  assailed  it  in  vain.  To  that  bare  wooden 
studio  one  might  go  to  breathe  Venetian  air,  and, 
better  yet,  the  very  spirit  wherein  the  elder  bro- 
thers of  Art  labored,  etherealized  by  metaphysical 
speculation,  and  sublimed  by  religious  fervor.  The 
beautiful  old  man !  Here  was  genius  with  no  vol- 
canic explosions  (the  mechanic  result  of  vulgar 
gunpowder  often),  but  lovely  as  a  Lapland  night ; 
here  was  fame,  not  sought  after  nor  worn  in  any 
cheap  French  fashion  as  a  ribbon  at  the  button- 
hole, but  so  gentle,  so  retiring,  that  it  seemed  no 
more  than  an  assured  and  emboldened  modesty ; 
here  was  ambition,  undebased  by  rivalry  and  inca- 
pable of  the  sidelong  look ;  and  all  these  massed 
and  harmonized  together  into  a  purity  and  depth 
of  character,  into  a  tone,  which  made  the  daily  life 
of  the  man  the  greatest  masterpiece  of  the  artist. 

But  let  us  go  back  to  the  Old  Town.  Thirty 
years  since,  the  Muster  and  the  Cornwallis  allowed 
some  vent  to  those  natural  instincts  which  Puritan- 
ism scotched,  but  not  killed.  The  Cornwallis  had 
entered  upon  the  estates  of  the  old  Guy-Fawkes 
procession,  confiscated  by  the  Revolution.  It  was 
a  masquerade,  in  which  that  grave  and  suppressed 
humor,  of  which  the  Yankees  are  fuller  than  other 
people,  burst  through  all  restraints,  and  disported 
itself  in  all  the  wildest  vagaries  of  fun.  Commonly 
the  Yankee  in  his  pleasures  suspects  the  presence 
of  Public  Opinion  as  a  detective,  and  accordingly 


78         CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO 

is  apt  to  pinion  himself  in  his  Sunday  suit.  It  is  a 
curious  commentary  on  the  artificiality  of  our  lives, 
that  men  must  be  disguised  and  masked  before  they 
will  venture  into  the  obscurer  corners  of  their  in- 
dividuality, and  display  the  true  features  of  their 
nature.  One  remarked  it  in  the  Carnival,  and  one 
especially  noted  it  here  among  a  race  naturally 
self-restrained  ;  for  Silas  and  Ezra  and  Jonas  were 
not  only  disguised  as  Redcoats,  Continentals,  and 
Indians,  but  not  unfrequently  disguised  in  drink 
also.  It  is  a  question  whether  the  Lyceum,  where 
the  public  is  obliged  to  comprehend  all  vagrom 
men,  supplies  the  place  of  the  old  popular  amuse- 
ments. A  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  Cotton 
Mather  bewails  the  carnal  attractions  of  the  tavern 
and  the  training-field,  and  tells  of  an  old  Indian 
who  imperfectly  understood  the  English  tongue, 
but  desperately  mastered  enough  of  it  (when  under 
sentence  of  death)  to  express  a  desire  for  instant 
hemp  rather  than  listen  to  any  more  ghostly  conso- 
lations. Puritanism  —  I  am  perfectly  aware  how 
great  a  debt  we  owe  it  —  tried  over  again  the  old 
experiment  of  driving  out  nature  with  a  pitchfork, 
and  had  the  usual  success.  It  was  like  a  ship  in- 
wardly on  fire,  whose  hatches  must  be  kept  hermet- 
ically battened  down  ;  for  the  admittance  of  an 
ounce  of  Heaven's  own  natural  air  would  explode 
it  utterly.  Morals  can  never  be  safely  embodied 
in  the  constable.  Polished,  cultivated,  fascinating 
Mephistopheles  !  it  is  for  the  ungovernable  break- 
ings-away  of  the  soul  from  unnatural  compressions 
that  thou  waitest  with  a  deprecatory  smile.  Then 


CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO        79 

it  is  that  them  offerest  thy  gentlemanly  arm  to  un- 
guarded youth  for  a  pleasant  stroll  through  the 
City  of  Destruction,  and,  as  a  special  favor,  intro- 
ducest  him  to  the  bewitching  Miss  Circe,  and  to 
that  model  of  the  hospitable  old  English  gentle- 
man, Mr.  Comus. 

But  the  Muster  and  the  Cornwallis  were  not 
peculiar  to  Cambridge.  Commencement-day  was. 
Saint  Pedagogus  was  a  worthy  whose  feast  could 
be  celebrated  by  men  who  quarrelled  with  minced- 
pies,  and  blasphemed  custard  through  the  nose. 
The  holiday  preserved  all  the  features  of  an  Eng- 
lish fair.  Stations  were  marked  out  beforehand 
by  the  town  constables,  and  distinguished  by  num- 
bered stakes.  These  were  assigned  to  the  different 
venders  of  small  wares  and  exhibitors  of  rarities, 
whose  canvas  booths,  beginning  at  the  market- 
place, sometimes  half  encircled  the  Common  with 
their  jovial  embrace.  Now  all  the  Jehoiada-boxes 
in  town  were  forced  to  give  up  their  rattling  depos- 
its of  specie,  if  not  through  the  legitimate  orifice, 
then  to  the  brute  force  of  the  hammer.  For  hither 
were  come  all  the  wonders  of  the  world,  making 
the  Arabian  Nights  seem  possible,  and  these  we 
beheld  for  half  price ;  not  without  mingled  emo- 
tions, —  pleasure  at  the  economy,  and  shame  at  not 
paying  the  more  manly  fee.  Here  the  mummy 
unveiled  her  withered  charms, — a  more  marvellous 
Ninon,  still  attractive  in  her  three-thousandth  year. 
Here  were  the  Siamese  twins ;  ah !  if  all  such 
forced  and  unnatural  unions  were  made  a  show  of ! 
Here  were  the  flying  horses  (their  supernatural 


80        CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO 

effect  injured — like  that  of  some  poems — by  the 
visibility  of  the  man  who  turned  the  crank),  on 
which,  as  we  tilted  at  the  ring,  we  felt  our  shoul- 
ders tingle  with  the  accolade,  and  heard  the  clink  of 
golden  spurs  at  our  heels.  Are  the  realities  of 
life  ever  worth  half  so  much  as  its  cheats  ?  And 
are  there  any  feasts  half  so  filling  at  the  price  as 
those  Barmecide  ones  spread  for  us  by  Imagina- 
tion? Hither  came  the  Canadian  giant,  surrep- 
titiously seen,  without  price,  as  he  alighted,  in 
broad  day,  (giants  were  always  foolish,)  at  the 
tavern.  Hither  came  the  great  horse  Columbus, 
with  shoes  two  inches  thick,  and  more  wisely  intro- 
duced by  night.  In  the  trough  of  the  town-pump 
might  be  seen  the  inermaid,  its  poor  monkey's 
head  carefully  sustained  above  water,  to  keep  it 
from  drowning.  There  were  dwarfs,  also,  who 
danced  and  sang,  and  many  a  proprietor  regretted 
the  transaudient  properties  of  canvas,  which  al- 
lowed the  frugal  public  to  share  in  the  melody 
without  entering  the  booth.  Is  it  a  slander  of 
J.  H.,  who  reports  that  he  once  saw  a  deacon,  emi- 
nent for  psalmody,  lingering  near  one  of  those 
vocal  tents,  and,  with  an  assumed  air  of  abstraction, 
furtively  drinking  in,  with  unhabitual  ears,  a  song, 
not  secular  merely,  but  with  a  dash  of  libertinism? 
The  New  England  proverb  says,  "  All  deacons  are 
good,  but  —  there's  odds  in  deacons."  On  these 
days  Snow  became  superterranean,  and  had  a  stand 
in  the  square,  and  Lewis  temperately  contended 
with  the  stronger  fascinations  of  egg-pop.  But 
space  would  fail  me  to  make  a  catalogue  of  every- 


CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO         81 

thing.  No  doubt,  Wisdom  also,  as  usual,  had  her 
quiet  booth  at  the  corner  of  some  street,  without 
entrance-fee,  and,  even  at  that  rate,  got  never  a 
customer  the  whole  day  long.  For  the  bankrupt 
afternoon  there  were  peep-shows,  at  a  cent  each. 

But  all  these  shows  and  their  showmen  are  as 
clean  gone  now  as  those  of  Caesar  and  Timour  and 
Napoleon,  for  which  the  world  paid  dearer.  They 
are  utterly  gone  out,  not  leaving  so  much  as  a 
snuff  behind,  —  as  little  thought  of  now  as  that 
John  Eobins,  who  was  once  so  considerable  a  phe- 
nomenon as  to  be  esteemed  the  last  great  Anti- 
christ and  son  of  perdition  by  the  entire  sect  of 
Muggletonians.  Were  Commencement  what  it 
used  to  be,  I  should  be  tempted  to  take  a  booth 
myself,  and  try  an  experiment  recommended  by  a 
satirist  of  some  merit,  whose  works  were  long  ago 
dead  and  (I  fear)  deedeed  to  boot. 

"Menenius,  thou   who  fain  wouldst  know  how  calmly  men  can 

pass 

Those  biting  portraits  of  themselves,  disguised  as  fox  or  ass, 
Go  borrow  coin  enough  to  buy  a  full-length  psyche-glass, 
Engage  a  rather  darkish  room  in  some  well-sought  position, 
And  let  the  town  break  out  with  bills,  so  much  per  head  admis- 
sion, 

GREAT  NATURAL  CURIOSITY  ! !     THE  BIGGEST  LIVING  FOOL  ! ! 
Arrange  your  mirror  cleverly,  before  it  set  a  stool, 
Admit  the  public  one  by  one,  place  each  upon  the  seat, 
Draw  up  the  curtain,  let  him  look  his  fill,  and  then  retreat. 
Smith  mounts  and  takes  a  thorough  view,  then  comes  serenely 

down, 

Goes  home  and  tells  his  wife  the  thing  is  curiously  like  Brown ; 
Brown  goes  and  stares,  and  tells  his  wife  the  wonder's  core  and 

pith 
Is  that  'tis  just  the  counterpart  of  that  conceited  Smith. 


82         CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY   YEARS  AGO 

Life  calls  us  all  to  such  a  show :  Menenius,  trust  in  me, 
While  thou  to  see  thy  neighbor  smil'st,  he  does  the  same  for 
thee." 

My  dear  Storg,  would  you  come  to  my  show, 
and,  instead  of  looking  in  my  glass,  insist  on  tak- 
ino1  your  money's  worth  in  staring  at  the  exhib- 
iter? 

Not  least  among  the  curiosities  which  the  day 
brought  together  were  some  of  the  graduates,  post- 
humous men,  as  it  were,  disentombed  from  country 
parishes  and  district-schools,  but  perennial  also,  in 
whom  freshly  survived  all  the  college  jokes,  and 
who  had  no  intelligence  later  than  their  Senior 
year.  These  had  gathered  to  eat  the  College 
dinner,  and  to  get  the  Triennial  Catalogue  (their 
libro  <f  oro),  referred  to  oftener  than  any  volume 
but  the  Concordance.  Aspiring  men  they  were 
certainly,  but  in  a  right  unworldly  way ;  this 
scholastic  festival  opening  a  peaceful  path  to  the 
ambition  which  might  else  have  devastated  man- 
kind with  Prolusions  on  the  Pentateuch,  or  Geneal- 
ogies of  the  Dormouse  Family.  For  since  in  the 
academic  processions  the  classes  are  ranked  in  the 
order  of  their  graduation,  and  he  has  the  best 
chance  at  the  dinner  who  has  the  fewest  teeth  to 
eat  it  with,  so,  by  degrees,  there  springs  up  a  com- 
petition in  longevity, — the  prize  contended  for  be- 
ing the  oldest  surviving  graduateship.  This  is  an 
office,  it  is  true,  without  emolument,  but  having 
certain  advantages,  nevertheless.  The  incumbent, 
if  he  come  to  Commencement,  is  a  prodigious  lion, 
and  commonly  gets  a  paragraph  in  the  newspapers 


CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY   YEARS  AGO        83 

once  a  year  with  the  (fiftieth)  last  survivor  of 
Washington's  Life-Guard.  If  a  clergyman,  he  is 
expected  to  ask  a  blessing  and  return  thanks  at  the 
dinner,  a  function  which  he  performs  with  cente- 
narian longanimity,  as  if  he  reckoned  the  ordinary 
life  of  man  to  be  fivescore  years,  and  that  a  grace 
must  be  long  to  reach  so  far  away  as  heaven. 
Accordingly,  this  silent  race  is  watched,  on  the 
course  of  the  Catalogue,  with  an  interest  worthy  of 
Newmarket;  and  as  star  after  star  rises  in  the 
galaxy  of  death,  till  one  name  is  left  alone,  an 
oasis  of  life  in  the  stellar  desert,  it  grows  solemn. 
The  natural  feeling  is  reversed,  and  it  is  the  soli- 
tary life  that  becomes  sad  and  monitory,  the  Sty- 
lites  there  on  the  lonely  top  of  his  century-pillar, 
who  has  heard  the  passing-bell  of  youth,  love, 
friendship,  hope,  —  of  everything  but  immitigable 
eld. 

Dr.  K.  was  President  of  the  University  then,  a 
man  of  genius,  but  of  genius  that  evaded  utiliza- 
tion,—  a  great  water-power,  but  without  rapids, 
and  flowing  with  too  smooth  and  gentle  a  current 
to  be  set  turning  wheels  and  whirling  spindles.  His 
was  not  that  restless  genius  of  which  the  man  seems 
to  be  merely  the  representative,  and  which  wreaks 
itself  in  literature  or  politics,  but  of  that  milder 
sort,  quite  as  genuine,  and  perhaps  of  more  contem- 
poraneous value,  which  is  the  man,  permeating  the 
whole  life  with  placid  force,  and  giving  to  word, 
look,  and  gesture  a  meaning  only  justifiable  by  our 
belief  in  a  reserved  power  of  latent  reinforcement. 
The  man  of  talents  possesses  them  like  so  many 


84        CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY   YEARS  AGO 

tools,  does  his  job  with  them,  and  there  an  end ; 
but  the  man  of  genius  is  possessed  by  it,  and  it 
makes  him  into  a  book  or  a  life  according  to  its 
whim.  Talent  takes  the  existing  moulds,  and 
makes  its  castings,  better  or  worse,  of  richer  or 
baser  metal,  according  to  knack  and  opportunity ; 
but  genius  is  always  shaping  new  ones,  and  runs 
the  man  in  them,  so  that  there  is  always  that  hu- 
man feel  in  its  results  which  gives  us  a  kindred 
thrill.  What  it  will  make,  we  can  only  conjecture, 
contented  always  with  knowing  the  infinite  balance 
of  possibility  against  which  it  can  draw  at  pleasure. 
Have  you  ever  seen  a  man  whose  cheque  would  be 
honored  for  a  million  pay  his  toll  of  one  cent  ?  and 
has  not  that  bit  of  copper,  no  bigger  than  your 
own,  and  piled  with  it  by  the  careless  toll-man, 
given  you  a  tingling  vision  of  what  golden  bridges 
he  could  pass,  —  into  what  Elysian  regions  of  taste 
and  enjoyment  and  culture,  barred  to  the  rest  of  us  ? 
Something  like  it  is  the  impression  made  by  such 
characters  as  K.'s  on  those  who  come  in  contact 
with  them. 

There  was  that  in  the  soft  and  rounded  (I  had 
almost  said  melting)  outlines  of  his  face  which 
reminded  one  of  Chaucer.  The  head  had  a  placid 
yet  dignified  droop  like  his.  He  was  an  anachro- 
nism, fitter  to  have  been  Abbot  of  Fountains  or 
Bishop  Golias,  courtier  and  priest,  humorist  and 
lord  spiritual,  all  in  one,  than  for  the  mastership 
of  a  provincial  college,  which  combined,  with  its 
purely  scholastic  functions,  those  of  accountant  and 
chief  of  police.  For  keeping  books  he  was  incom- 


CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY  YEARS  AGO        85 

petent  (unless  it  were  those  lie  borrowed),  and  the 
only  discipline  he  exercised  was  by  the  unobtrusive 
pressure  of  a  geiitlemanliness  which  rendered  in- 
subordination to  him  impossible.  But  the  world 
always  judges  a  man  (and  rightly  enough,  too) 
by  his  little  faults,  which  he  shows  a  hundred 
times  a  day,  rather  than  by  his  great  virtues,  which 
he  discloses  perhaps  but  once  in  a  lifetime,  and  to 
a  single  person,  —  nay,  in  proportion  as  they  are 
rarer,  and  he  is  nobler,  is  shyer  of  letting  their  ex- 
istence be  known  at  all.  He  was  one  of  those  mis- 
placed persons  whose  misfortune  it  is  that  their 
lives  overlap  two  distinct  eras,  and  are  already  so 
impregnated  with  one  that  they  can  never  be  in 
healthy  sympathy  with  the  other.  Born  when  the 
New  England  clergy  were  still  an  establishment 
and  an  aristocracy,  and  when  office  was  almost  al- 
ways for  life,  and  often  hereditary,  he  lived  to  be 
thrown  upon  a  time  when  avocations  of  all  colors 
might  be  shuffled  together  in  the  life  of  one  man, 
like  a  pack  of  cards,  so  that  you  could  not  pro- 
phesy that  he  who  was  ordained  to-day  might  not 
accept  a  colonelcy  of  filibusters  to-morrow.  Such 
temperaments  as  his  attach  themselves,  like  bar- 
nacles, to  what  seems  permanent ;  but  presently 
the  good  ship  Progress  weighs  anchor,  and  whirls 
them  away  from  drowsy  tropic  inlets  to  arctic 
waters  of  unnatural  ice.  To  such  crustaceous  na- 
tures, created  to  cling  upon  the  immemorial  rock 
amid  softest  mosses,  comes  the  bustling  Nineteenth 
Century  and  says,  "  Come,  come,  bestir  yourself 
and  be  practical  J  get  out  of  that  old  shell  of  yours 


86         CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY  YEARS  AGO 

forthwith !  "     Alas !  to  get  out  of  the  shell  is  to 
die! 

One  of  the  old  travellers  in  South  America  tells 
of  fishes  that  built  their  nests  in  trees,  (piscium  et 
summa  hcesit  genus  ulmo^)  and  gives  a  print  of 
the  mother  fish  upon  her  nest,  while  her  mate 
mounts  perpendicularly  to  her  without  aid  of  legs 
or  wings.  Life  shows  plenty  of  such  incongruities 
between  a  man's  place  and  his  nature,  (not  so 
easily  got  over  as  by  the  traveller's  undoubting  en- 
graver,) and  one  cannot  help  fancying  that  K.  was 
an  instance  in  point.  He  never  encountered,  one 
would  say,  the  attraction  proper  to  draw  out  his 
native  force.  Certainly,  few  men  who  impressed 
others  so  strongly,  and  of  whom  so  many  good 
things  are  remembered,  left  less  behind  them  to 
justify  contemporary  estimates.  He  printed  noth- 
ing, and  was,  perhaps,  one  of  those  the  electric 
sparkles  of  whose  brains,  discharged  naturally  and 
healthily  in  conversation,  refuse  to  pass  through 
the  non-conducting  medium  of  the  inkstand.  His 
ana  would  make  a  delightful  collection.  One  or 
two  of  his  official  ones  will  be  in  place  here. 
Hearing  that  Porter's  flip  (which  was  exemplary) 
had  too  great  an 'attraction  for  the  collegians,  he 
resolved  to  investigate  the  matter  himself.  Ac- 
cordingly, entering  the  old  inn  one  day,  he  called 
for  a  mug  of  it,  and,  having  drunk  it,  said,  "  And 
so,  Mr.  Porter,  the  young  gentlemen  come  to  drink 
your  flip,  do  they  ?  "  "  Yes,  sir,  —  sometimes." 
"  Ah,  weU,  I  should  think  they  would.  Good  day, 
Mr.  Porter,"  and  departed,  saying  nothing  more ; 


CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY  YEARS  AGO        87 

for  he  always  wisely  allowed  for  the  existence  of  a 
certain  amount  of  human  nature  in  ingenuous  youth. 
At  another  time  the  "  Harvard  Washington  "  asked 
leave  to  go  into  Boston  to  a  collation  which  had 
been  offered  them.  "  Certainly,  young  gentlemen," 
said  the  President,  "  but  have  you  engaged  any  one 
to  bring  home  your  muskets  ?  "  —  the  College  be- 
ing responsible  for  these  weapons,  which  belonged 
to  the  State.  Again,  when  a  student  came  with  a 
physician's  certificate,  and  asked  leave  of  absence, 
K.  granted  it  at  once,  and  then  added,  "  By  the  way, 

Mr. ,  persons  interested  in  the  relation  which 

exists  between  states  of  the  atmosphere  and  health 
have  noticed  a  curious  fact  in  regard  to  the  climate 
of  Cambridge,  especially  within  the  College  limits, 
—  the  very  small  number  of  deaths  in  proportion 
to  the  cases  of  dangerous  illness."  This  is  told  of 
Judge  W.,  himself  a  wit,  and  capable  of  enjoying 
the  humorous  delicacy  of  the  reproof. 

Shall  I  take  Brahmin  Alcott's  favorite  word, 
and  call  him  a  daemonic  man  ?  No,  the  Latin  ge- 
nius is  quite  old-fashioned  enough  for  me,  means  the 
same  thing,  and  its  derivative  geniality  expresses, 
moreover,  the  base  of  K.'s  being.  How  he  sug- 
gested cloistered  repose,  and  quadrangles  mossy  with 
centurial  associations  !  How  easy  he  was,  and  how 
without  creak  was  every  movement  of  his  mind  ! 
This  life  was  good  enough  for  him,  and  the  next 
not  too  good.  The  gentleman-like  pervaded  even 
his  prayers.  His  were  not  the  manners  of  a  man 
of  the  world,  nor  of  a  man  of  the  other  world 
either  ;  but  both  met  in  him  to  balance  each  other 


88         CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY   YEARS  AGO 

in  a  beautiful  equilibrium.  Praying,  lie  leaned 
forward  upon  the  pulpit-cushion  as  for  conversa- 
tion, and  seemed  to  feel  himself  (without  irrever- 
ence) on  terms  of  friendly,  but  courteous,  familiar- 
ity with  Heaven.  The  expression  of  his  face  was 
that  of  tranquil  contentment,  and  he  appeared  less 
to  be  supplicating  expected  mercies  than  thankful 
for  those  already  found,  —  as  if  he  were  saying  the 
gratias  in  the  refectory  of  the  Abbey  of  Theleme. 
Under  him  flourished  the  Harvard  Washington 
Corps,  whose  gyrating  banner,  inscribed  Tain 
Marti  quam  Mercurio  (atqui  magis  Lyceo  should 
have  been  added,)  on  the  evening  of  training-days, 
was  an  accurate  dynamometer  of  Willard's  punch 
or  Porter's  flip.  It  was  they  who,  after  being  roy- 
ally entertained  by  a  maiden  lady  of  the  town,  en- 
tered in  their  orderly  book  a  vote  that  Miss  Blank 
was  a  gentleman.  I  see  them  now,  returning  from 
the  imminent  deadly  breach  of  the  law  of  Rechab, 
unable  to  form  other  than  the  serpentine  line  of 
beauty,  while  their  officers,  brotherly  rather  than 
imperious,  instead  of  reprimanding,  tearfully  em- 
braced the  more  eccentric  wanderers  from  military 
precision.  Under  him  the  Med.  Facs.  took  their 
equal  place  among  the  learned  societies  of  Europe, 
numbering  among  their  grateful  honorary  mem- 
bers Alexander,  Emperor  of  all  the  Russias,  who 
(if  College  legends  may  be  trusted)  sent  them  in 
return  for  their  diploma  a  gift  of  medals  confis- 
cated by  the  authorities.  Under  him  the  College 
fire-engine  was  vigilant  and  active  in  suppressing 
any  tendency  to  spontaneous  combustion  among  the 


CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY   YEARS  AGO         89 

Freshmen,  or  rushed  wildly  to  imaginary  conflagra- 
tions, generally  in  a  direction  where  punch  was  to 
be  had.  All  these  useful  conductors  for  the  natu- 
ral electricity  of  youth,  dispersing  it  or  turning  it 
harmlessly  into  the  earth,  are  taken  away  now,  — 
wisely  or  not,  is  questionable. 

An  academic  town,  in  whose  atmosphere  there 
is  always  something  antiseptic,  seems  naturally  to 
draw  to  itself  certain  varieties  and  to  preserve  cer- 
tain humors  (in  the  Ben  Jonsonian  sense)  of  char- 
acter,—  men  who  come  not  to  study  so  much  as 
to  be  studied.  At  the  headquarters  of  Washington 
once,  and  now  of  the  Muses,  lived  C ,  but  be- 
fore the  date  of  these  recollections.  Here  for  seven 
years  (as  the  law  was  then)  he  made  his  house  his 
castle,  sunning  himself  in  his  elbow-chair  at  the 
front-door,  on  that  seventh  day,  secure  from  every 
arrest  but  Death's.  Here  long  survived  him  his 
turbaned  widow,  studious  only  of  Spinoza,  and  re- 
fusing to  molest  the  canker-worms  that  annually 
disleaved  her  elms,  because  we  were  all  vermicular 
alike.  She  had  been  a  famous  beauty  once,  but 
the  canker  years  had  left  her  leafless,  too ;  and  I 
used  to  wonder,  as  I  saw  her  sitting  always  tur- 
baned and  always  alone  at  her  accustomed  window, 
whether  she  were  ever  visited  by  the  reproachful 
shade  of  him  who  (in  spite  of  Rosalind)  died  bro- 
ken-hearted for  her  in  her  radiant  youth. 

And  this  reminds  me  of  J.  F.,  who,  also  crossed 
in  love,  allowed  no  mortal  eye  to  behold  his  face 
for  many  years.  The  eremitic  instinct  is  not  pe- 
culiar to  the  Thebais,  as  many  a  New  England 


90        CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY   YEARS  AGO 

village  can  testify ;  and  it  is  worthy  of  considera- 
tion that  the  Romish  Church  has  not  forgotten  this 
among  her  other  points  of  intimate  contact  with 
human  nature.  F.  became  purely  vespertinal, 
never  stirring  abroad  till  after  dark.  He  occupied 
two  rooms,  migrating  from  one  to  the  other,  as  the 
necessities  of  housewifery  demanded,  thus  shunning 
all  sight  of  womankind,  and  being  practically  more 
solitary  in  his  dual  apartment  than  Montaigne's 
Dean  of  St.  Hilaire  in  his  single  one.  When  it 
was  requisite  that  he  should  put  his  signature  to 
any  legal  instrument,  (for  he  was  an  anchorite  of 
ample  means,)  he  wrapped  himself  in  a  blanket, 
allowing  nothing  to  be  seen  but  the  hand  which 
acted  as  scribe.  What  impressed  us  boys  more 
than  anything  else  was  the  rumor  that  he  had  suf- 
fered his  beard  to  grow,  —  such  an  anti-Sheffieldism 
being  almost  unheard  of  in  those  days,  and  the 
peculiar  ornament  of  man  being  associated  in  our 
minds  with  nothing  more  recent  than  the  patri- 
archs and  apostles,  whose  effigies  we  were  obliged 
to  solace  ourselves  with  weekly  in  the  Family 
Bible.  He  came  out  of  his  oysterhood  at  last,  and 
I  knew  him  well,  a  kind-hearted  man,  who  gave 
annual  sleigh-rides  to  the  town-paupers,  and  sup- 
plied the  poorer  children  with  school-books.  His 
favorite  topic  of  conversation  was  Eternity,  and, 
like  many  other  worthy  persons,  he  used  to  fancy 
that  meaning  was  an  affair  of  aggregation,  and 
that  he  doubled  the  intensity  of  what  he  said  by 
the  sole  aid  of  the  multiplication-table.  "Eter- 
nity ! "  he  used  to  say,  "  it  is  not  a  day ;  it  is  not  a 


CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY   YEARS  AGO         91 

year ;  it  is  not  a  hundred  years ;  it  is  not  a  thou- 
sand years  ;  it  is  not  a  million  years ;  no,  sir,"  (the 
sir  being  thrown  in  to  recall  wandering  attention,) 
" it  is  not  ten  million  years! "  and  so  on,  his  enthu- 
siasm becoming  a  mere  frenzy  when  he  got  among 
his  sextillions,  till  I  sometimes  wished  he  had  con- 
tinued in  retirement.  He  used  to  sit  at  the  open 
window  during  thunder-storms,  and  had  a  Grecian 
feeling  about  death  by  lightning.  In  a  certain 
sense  he  had  his  desire,  for  he  died  suddenly,  — 
not  by  fire  from  heaven,  but  by  the  red  flash  of 
apoplexy,  leaving  his  whole  estate  to  charitable 
uses. 

If  K.  were  out  of  place  as  President,  that  was 
not  P.  as  Greek  Professor.  Who  that  ever  saw 
him  can  forget  him,  in  his  old  age,  like  a  lusty 
winter,  frosty  but  kindly,  with  great  silver  spec- 
tacles of  the  heroic  period,  such  as  scarce  twelve 
noses  of  these  degenerate  days  could  bear?  He 
was  a  natural  celibate,  not  dwelling  "  like  the  fly 
in  the  heart  of  the  apple,"  but  like  a  lonely  bee 
rather,  absconding  himself  in  Hymettian  flowers, 
incapable  of  matrimony  as  a  solitary  palm-tree. 
There  was,  to  be  sure,  a  tradition  of  youthful  dis- 
appointment, and  a  touching  story  which  L.  told 

me  perhaps  confirms  it.     When  Mrs. died,  a 

carriage  with  blinds  drawn  followed  the  funeral 
train  at  some  distance,  and,  when  the  coffin  had 
been  lowered  into  the  grave,  drove  hastily  away  to 
escape  that  saddest  of  earthly  sounds,  the  first  rattle 
of  earth  upon  the  lid.  It  was  afterward  known 
that  the  carriage  held  a  single  mourner,  —  our 


94         CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY  YEARS  AGO 

peach-orchards  would  have  been  sovereign  against 
an  attack  of  Freshmen.  He  wore  them  all  in  turn, 
getting  through  all  in  the  course  of  the  year,  like 
the  sun  through  the  signs  of  the  zodiac,  modulating 
them  according  to  seasons  and  celestial  phenomena, 
so  that  never  was  spider-web  or  chickweed  so  sensi- 
tive a  weather-gauge  as  they.  Nor  did  his  political 
party  find  him  less  loyal.  Taking  all  the  tickets, 
he  would  seat  himself  apart,  and  carefully  compare 
them  with  the  list  of  regular  nominations  as  printed 
in  his  Daily  Advertiser,  before  he  dropped  his 
ballot  in  the  box.  In  less  ambitious  moments,  it 
almost  seems  to  me  that  I  would  rather  have  had 
that  slow,  conscientious  vote  of  P.'s  alone,  than  to 
have  been  chosen  Alderman  of  the  Ward ! 

If  you  had  walked  to  what  was  then  Sweet  Au- 
burn by  the  pleasant  Old  Road,  on  some  June 
morning  thirty  years  ago,  you  would  very  likely 
have  met  two  other  characteristic  persons,  both 
phantasmagoric  now,  and  belonging  to  the  past. 
Fifty  years  earlier,  the  scarlet-coated,  rapiered  fig- 
ures of  Vassall,  Lechmere,  Oliver,  and  Brattle 
creaked  up  and  down  there  on  red-heeled  shoes, 
lifting  the  ceremonious  three-cornered  hat,  and  of- 
fering the  fugacious  hospitalities  of  the  snuff-box. 
They  are  all  shadowy  alike  now,  not  one  of  your 
Etruscan  Lucumos  or  Roman  Consuls  more  so, 
my  dear  Storg.  First  is  W.,  his  queue  slender 
and  tapering,  like  the  tail  of  a  violet  crab,  held  out 
horizontally  by  the  high  collar  of  his  shepherd's- 
gray  overcoat,  whose  style  was  of  the  latest  when 
he  studied  at  Leyden  in  his  hot  youth.  The  age 


CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY   YEARS  AGO         95 

of  cheap  clothes  sees  no  more  of  those  faithful  old 
garments,  as  proper  to  their  wearers  and  as  distinc- 
tive as  the  barks  of  trees,  and  by  long  use  inter- 
penetrated with  their  very  nature.  Nor  do  we  see 
so  many  Humors  (still  in  the  old  sense)  now  that 
every  man's  soul  belongs  to  the  Public,  as  when 
social  distinctions  were  more  marked,  and  men  felt 
that  their  personalities  were  their  castles,  in  which 
they  could  intrench  themselves  against  the  world. 
Nowadays  men  are  shy  of  letting  their  true  selves 
be  seen,  as  if  in  some  former  life  they  had  com- 
mitted a  crime,  and  were  all  the  time  afraid  of  dis- 
covery and  arrest  in  this.  Formerly  they  used  to 
insist  on  your  giving  the  wall  to  their  peculiarities, 
and  you  may  still  find  examples  of  it  in  the  parson 
or  the  doctor  of  retired  villages.  One  of  W.'s 
oddities  was  touching.  A  little  brook  used  to  run 
across  the  street,  and  the  sidewalk  was  carried  over 
it  by  a  broad  stone.  Of  course  there  is  no  brook 
now.  What  use  did  that  little  glimpse  of  a  ripple 
serve,  where  the  children  used  to  launch  their  chip 
fleets  ?  W.,  in  going  over  this  stone,  which  gave  a 
hollow  resonance  to  the  tread,  had  a  trick  of  strik- 
ing upon  it  three  times  with  his  cane,  and  mutter- 
ing, "  Tom,  Tom,  Tom  !  "  I  used  to  think  he  was 
only  mimicking  with  his  voice  the  sound  of  the 
blows,  and  possibly  it  was  that  sound  which  sug- 
gested his  thought,  for  he  was  remembering  a  fa- 
vorite nephew,  prematurely  dead.  Perhaps  Tom 
had  sailed  his  boats  there;  perhaps  the  reverber- 
ation under  the  old  man's  foot  hinted  at  the  hol- 
lo wness  of  life ;  perhaps  the  fleeting  eddies  of 


96         CAMBRIDGE   THIRTY    YEARS  AGO 

the  water  brought  to  mind  the  fugaces  annos. 
W.,  like  P.,  wore  amazing  spectacles,  fit  to  trans- 
mit no  smaller  image  than  the  page  of  mightiest 
folios  of  Dioscorides  or  Hercules  de  Saxonia,  and 
rising  full-disked  upon  the  beholder  like  those 
prodigies  of  two  moons  at  once,  portending  change 
to  monarchs.  The  great  collar  disallowing  any  in- 
dependent rotation  of  the  head,  I  remember  he 
used  to  turn  his  whole  person  in  order  to  bring 
their  foci  to  bear  upon  an  object.  One  can  fancy 
that  terrified  Nature  would  have  yielded  up  her 
secrets  at  once,  without  cross-examination,  at  their 
first  glare.  Through  them  he  had  gazed  fondly 
into  the  great  mare's-nest  of  Junius,  publishing 
his  observations  upon  the  eggs  found  therein  in  a 
tall  octavo.  It  was  he  who  introduced  vaccination 
to  this  Western  World.  Malicious  persons  disput- 
ing his  claim  to  this  distinction,  he  published  this 
advertisement :  "  Lost,  a  gold  snuff-box,  with  the 
inscription,  '  The  Jenner  of  the  Old  World  to  the 
Jenner  of  the  New.'  Whoever  shall  return  the 

same  to  Dr. shall  be  suitably  rewarded."     It 

was  never  returned.  Would  the  search  after  it 
have  been  as  fruitless  as  that  of  the  alchemist  after 
his  equally  imaginary  gold?  Malicious  persons 
persisted  in  believing  the  box  as  visionary  as  the 
claim  it  was  meant  to  buttress  with  a  semblance  of 
reality.  He  used  to  stop  and  say  good-morning 
kindly,  and  pat  the  shoulder  of  the  blushing 
school-boy  who  now,  with  the  fierce  snow-storm 
wildering  without,  sits  and  remembers  sadly  those 
old  meetings  and  partings  in  the  June  sunshine. 


CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY  YEARS  AGO         97 

Then  tkere  was  S.,  whose  resounding  "  Haw, 
haw,  haw !  by  Shorge ! "  positively  enlarged  the 
income  of  every  dweller  in  Cambridge.  In  down- 
right, honest  good  cheer  and  good  neighborhood,  it 
was  worth  five  hundred  a  year  to  every  one  of  us. 
Its  jovial  thunders  cleared  the  mental  air  of  every 
sulky  cloud.  Perpetual  childhood  dwelt  in  him, 
the  childhood  of  his  native  Southern  France,  and 
its  fixed  air  was  all  the  time  bubbling  up  and 
sparkling  and  winking  in  his  eyes.  It  seemed  as 
if  his  placid  old  face  were  only  a  mask  behind 
which  a  merry  Cupid  had  ambushed  himself,  peep- 
ing out  all  the  while,  and  ready  to  drop  it  when  the 
play  grew  tiresome.  Every  word  he  uttered  seemed 
to  be  hilarious,  no  matter  what  the  occasion.  If 
he  were  sick,  and  you  visited  him,  if  he  had  met 
with  a  misfortune,  (and  there  are  few  men  so  wise 
that  they  can  look  even  at  the  back  of  a  retiring 
sorrow  with  composure,)  it  was  all  one;  his  great 
laugh  went  off  as  if  it  were  set  like  an  alarm-clock, 
to  run  down,  whether  he  would  or  no,  at  a  certain 
nick.  Even  after  an  ordinary  Good  morning! 
(especially  if  to  an  old  pupil,  and  in  French,)  the 
wonderful  Haw,  haw,  haw !  by  Shorge  I  would 
burst  upon  you  unexpectedly,  like  a  salute  of  artil- 
lery on  some  holiday  which  you  had  forgotten. 
Everything  was  a  joke  to  him,  —  that  the  oath  of 
allegiance  had  been  administered  to  him  by  your 
grandfather,  —  that  he  had  taught  Prescott  his  first 
Spanish  (of  which  he  was  proud), — no  matter  what. 
Everything  came  to  him  marked  by  Nature  Right 
side  up,  with  care,  and  he  kept  it  so.  The  world 


98        CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY   YEARS  AGO 

to  him,  as  to  all  of  us,  was  like  a  medal,  on  the 
obverse  of  which  is  stamped  the  image  of  Joy,  and 
on  the  reverse  that  of  Care.  S.  never  took  the 
foolish  pains  to  look  at  that  other  side,  even  if 
he  knew  its  existence ;  much  less  would  it  have  oc- 
curred to  him  to  turn  it  into  view,  and  insist  that 
his  friends  should  look  at  it  with  him.  Nor  was 
this  a  mere  outside  good-humor;  its  source  was 
deeper,  in  a  true  Christian  kindliness  and  amenity. 
Once,  when  he  had  been  knocked  down  by  a  tip- 
sily-driven  sleigh,  and  was  urged  to  prosecute  the 
offenders,  "  No,  no,"  he  said,  his  wounds  still  fresh, 
"  young  blood !  young  blood !  it  must  have  its  way ; 
I  was  young  myself."  Was  !  few  men  come  into 
life  so  young  as  S.  went  out.  He  landed  in  Boston 
(then  the  front  door  of  America)  in  '93,  and,  in 
honor  of  the  ceremony,  had  his  head  powdered 
afresh,  and  put  on  a  suit  of  court-mourning  for 
Louis  XVI.  before  he  set  foot  on  the  wharf.  My 
fancy  always  dressed  him  in  that  violet  silk,  and 
his  soul  certainly  wore  a  full  court-suit.  What 
was  there  ever  like  his  bow?  It  was  as  if  you 
had  received  a  decoration,  and  could  write  yourself 
gentleman  from  that  day  forth.  His  hat  rose,  re- 
greeting  your  own,  and,  having  sailed  through  the 
stately  curve  of  the  old  regime,  sank  gently  back 
over  that  placid  brain,  which  harbored  no  thought 
less  white  than  the  powder  which  covered  it.  I 
have  sometimes  imagined  that  there  was  a  gradu- 
ated arc  over  his  head,  invisible  to  other  eyes  than 
his,  by  which  he  meted  out  to  each  his  rightful 
share  of  castorial  consideration.  I  carry  in  my 


CAMBRIDGE    THIRTY  YEARS  AGO        99 

memory  three  exemplary  bows.  The  first  is  that 
of  an  old  beggar,  who,  already  carrying  in  his 
hand  a  white  hat,  the  gift  of  benevolence,  took  off 
the  black  one  from  his  head  also,  and  profoundly 
saluted  me  with  both  at  once,  giving  me,  in  return 
for  my  alms,  a  dual  benediction,  puzzling  as  a  nod 
from  Janus  Bifrons.  The  second  I  received  from 
an  old  Cardinal,  who  was  taking  his  walk  just  out- 
side the  Porta  San  Giovanni  at  Rome.  I  paid  him 
the  courtesy  due  to  his  age  and  rank.  Forthwith 
rose,  first,  the  Hat ;  second,  the  hat  of  his  confes- 
sor; third,  that  of  another  priest  who  attended 
him ;  fourth,  the  fringed  cocked-hat  of  his  coach- 
man; fifth  and  sixth,  the  ditto,  ditto,  of  his  two 
footmen.  Here  was  an  investment,  indeed ;  six 
hundred  per  cent,  interest  on  a  single  bow!  The 
third  bow,  worthy  to  be  noted  in  one's  almanac 
among  the  other  mirabilia,  was  that  of  S.,  in  which 
courtesy  had  mounted  to  the  last  round  of  her 
ladder,  —  and  tried  to  draw  it  up  after  her. 

But  the  genial  veteran  is  gone  even  while  I  am 
writing  this,  and  I  will  play  Old  Mortality  no 
longer.  Wandering  among  these  recent  graves, 

my  dear  friend,  we  may  chance  upon ;  but 

no,  I  will  not  end  my  sentence.  I  bid  you  heartily 
farewell ! 


LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL  IN  ITALY 
AND  ELSEWHERE 

1854 

I 

AT  SEA 

THE  sea  was  meant  to  be  looked  at  from  shore, 
as  mountains  are  from  the  plain.  Lucretius  made 
this  discovery  long  ago,  and  was  blunt  enough  to 
blurt  it  forth,  romance  and  sentiment  —  in  other 
words,  the  pretence  of  feeling  what  we  do  not  feel 
—  being  inventions  of  a  later  day.  To  be  sure, 
Cicero  used  to  twaddle  about  Greek  literature  and 
philosophy,  much  as  people  do  about  ancient  art 
nowadays ;  but  I  rather  sympathize  with  those 
stout  old  Romans  who  despised  both,  and  believed 
that  to  found  an  empire  was  as  grand  an  achieve- 
ment as  to  build  an  epic  or  to  carve  a  statue.  But 
though  there  might  have  been  twaddle,  (as  why 
not,  since  there  was  a  Senate?)  I  rather  think 
Petrarch  was  the  first  choragus  of  that  sentimental 
dance  which  so  long  led  young  folks  away  from 
the  realities  of  life  like  the  piper  of  Hamelin,  and 
whose  succession  ended,  let  us  hope,  with  Chateau- 
briand. But  for  them,  Byron,  whose  real  strength 
lay  in  his  sincerity,  would  never  have  talked  about 


AT  SEA  101 

the  "  sea  bounding  beneath  him  like  a  steed  that 
knows  his  rider,"  and  all  that  sort  of  thing.  Even 
if  it  had  been  true,  steam  has  been  as  fatal  to  that 
part  of  the  romance  of  the  sea  as  to  hand-loom 
weaving.  But  what  say  you  to  a  twelve  days'  calm 
such  as  we  dozed  through  in  mid-Atlantic  and  in 
mid- August  ?  I  know  nothing  so  tedious  at  once 
and  exasperating  as  that  regular  slap  of  the  wilted 
sails  when  the  ship  rises  and  falls  with  the  slow 
breathing  of  the  sleeping  sea,  one  greasy,  brassy 
swell  following  another,  slow,  smooth,  immitigable 
as  the  series  of  Wordsworth's  Ecclesiastical  Son- 
nets. Even  at  his  best,  Neptune,  in  a  tete-a-tete, 
has  a  way  of  repeating  himself,  an  obtuseness  to 
the  ne  quid  nimis,  that  is  stupefying.  It  reminds 
me  of  organ-music  and  my  good  friend  Sebastian 
Bach.  A  fugue  or  two  will  do  very  well ;  but  a 
concert  made  up  of  nothing  else  is  altogether  too 
epic  for  me.  There  is  nothing  so  desperately  mo- 
notonous as  the  sea,  and  I  no  longer  wonder  at  the 
cruelty  of  pirates.  Fancy  an  existence  in  which 
the  coming  up  of  a  clumsy  finback  whale,  who  says 
Pooh  f  to  you  solemnly  as  you  lean  over  the  taff- 
rail,  is  an  event  as  exciting  as  an  election  on 
shore !  The  dampness  seems  to  strike  into  the 
wits  as  into  the  lucifer-matches,  so  that  one  may 
scratch  a  thought  half  a  dozen  times  and  get  noth- 
ing at  last  but  a  faint  sputter,  the  forlorn  hope  of 
fire,  which  only  goes  far  enough  to  leave  a  sense  of 
suffocation  behind  it.  Even  smoking  becomes  an 
employment  instead  of  a  solace.  Who  less  likely 
to  come  to  their  wit's  end  than  W.  M.  T.  and 


102  LEA  VES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

A.  H.  C.  ?  Yet  I  have  seen  them  driven  to  five 
meals  a  day  for  mental  occupation.  I  sometimes  sit 
and  pity  Noah;  but  even  he  had  this  advantage 
over  all  succeeding  navigators,  that,  wherever  he 
landed,  he  was  sure  to  get  no  ill  news  from  home. 
He  should  be  canonized  as  the  patron-saint  of 
newspaper  correspondents,  being  the  only  man  who 
ever  had  the  very  last  authentic  intelligence  from 
everywhere. 

The  finback  whale  recorded  just  above  has  much 
the  look  of  a  brown-paper  parcel,  —  the  whitish 
stripes  that  run  across  him  answering  for  the  pack- 
thread. He  has  a  kind  of  accidental  hole  in  the 
top  of  his  head,  through  which  he  pooh-poohs  the 
rest  of  creation,  and  which  looks  as  if  it  had  been 
made  by  the  chance  thrust  of  a  chestnut  rail.  He 
was  our  first  event.  Our  second  was  harpooning  a 
sunfish,  which  basked  dozing  on  the  lap  of  the  sea, 
looking  so  much  like  the  giant  turtle  of  an  alder- 
man's dream,  that  I  am  persuaded  he  would  have 
let  himself  be  made  into  mock-turtle  soup  rather 
than  acknowledge  his  imposture.  But  he  broke 
away  just  as  they  were  hauling  him  over  the  side, 
and  sank  placidly  through  the  clear  water,  leaving 
behind  him  a  crimson  trail  that  wavered  a  moment 
and  was  gone. 

The  sea,  though,  has  better  sights  than  these. 
When  we  were  up  with  the  Azores,  we  began  to 
meet  flying-fish  and  Portuguese  men-of-war  beau- 
tiful as  the  galley  of  Cleopatra,  tiny  craft  that 
dared  these  seas  before  Columbus.  I  have  seen 
one  of  the  former  rise  from  the  crest  of  a  wave, 


AT  SEA  103 

and,  glancing  from  another  some  two  hundred  feet 
beyond,  take  a  fresh  flight  of  perhaps  as  far.  How 
Calderon  would  have  similized  this  pretty  creature 
had  he  ever  seen  it !  How  would  he  have  run  him 
up  and  down  the  gamut  of  simile !  If  a  fish,  then 
a  fish  with  wings  ;  if  a  bird,  then  a  bird,  with  fins  ; 
and  so  on,  keeping  up  the  light  shuttle-cock  of  a 
conceit  as  is  his  wont.  Indeed,  the  poor  thing  is 
the  most  killing  bait  for  a  comparison,  and  I  assure 
you  I  have  three  or  four  in  my  inkstand ;  —  but  be 
calm,  they  shall  stay  there.  Moore,  who  looked 
on  all  nature  as  a  kind  of  Gradus  ad  Parnassum, 
a  thesaurus  of  similitude,  and  spent  his  life  in  a 
game  of  What  is  my  thought  like  ?  with  himself, 
did  the  flying-fish  on  his  way  to  Bermuda.  So 
I  leave  him  in  peace. 

The  most  beautiful  thing  I  have  seen  at  sea,  all 
the  more  so  that  I  had  never  heard  of  it,  is  the 
trail  of  a  shoal  of  fish  through  the  phosphorescent 
water.  It  is  like  a  flight  of  silver  rockets,  or  the 
streaming  of  northern  lights  through  that  silent 
nether  heaven.  I  thought  nothing  could  go  beyond 
that  rustling  star-foam  which  was  churned  up  by 
our  ship's  bows,  or  those  eddies  and  disks  of  dreamy 
flame  that  rose  and  wandered  out  of  sight  behind 
us. 

'T  was  fire  our  ship  was  plunging  through, 
Cold  fire  that  o'er  the  quarter  flew  ; 
And  wandering  moons  of  idle  flame 
Grew  full  and  waned,  and  went  and  came, 
Dappling  with  light  the  huge  sea-snake 
That  slid  behind  us  in  the  wake. 

But  there  was  something  even  more  delicately  rare 


102  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

A.  H.  C.  ?  Yet  I  have  seen  them  driven  to  five 
meals  a  day  for  mental  occupation.  I  sometimes  sit 
and  pity  Noah;  but  even  he  had  this  advantage 
over  all  succeeding  navigators,  that,  wherever  he 
landed,  he  was  sure  to  get  no  ill  news  from  home. 
He  should  be  canonized  as  the  patron-saint  of 
newspaper  correspondents,  being  the  only  man  who 
ever  had  the  very  last  authentic  intelligence  from 
everywhere. 

The  finback  whale  recorded  just  above  has  much 
the  look  of  a  brown-paper  parcel,  —  the  whitish 
stripes  that  run  across  him  answering  for  the  pack- 
thread. He  has  a  kind  of  accidental  hole  in  the 
top  of  his  head,  through  which  he  pooh-poohs  the 
rest  of  creation,  and  which  looks  as  if  it  had  been 
made  by  the  chance  thrust  of  a  chestnut  rail.  He 
was  our  first  event.  Our  second  was  harpooning  a 
sunfish,  which  basked  dozing  on  the  lap  of  the  sea, 
looking  so  much  like  the  giant  turtle  of  an  alder- 
man's dream,  that  I  am  persuaded  he  would  have 
let  himself  be  made  into  mock-turtle  soup  rather 
than  acknowledge  his  imposture.  But  he  broke 
away  just  as  they  were  hauling  him  over  the  side, 
and  sank  placidly  through  the  clear  water,  leaving 
behind  him  a  crimson  trail  that  wavered  a  moment 
and  was  gone. 

The  sea,  though,  has  better  sights  than  these. 
When  we  were  up  with  the  Azores,  we  began  to 
meet  flying-fish  and  Portuguese  men-of-war  beau- 
tiful as  the  galley  of  Cleopatra,  tiny  craft  that 
dared  these  seas  before  Columbus.  I  have  seen 
one  of  the  former  rise  from  the  crest  of  a  wave, 


AT  SEA  103 

and,  glancing  from  another  some  two  hundred  feet 
beyond,  take  a  fresh  flight  of  perhaps  as  far.  How 
Calderon  would  have  similized  this  pretty  creature 
had  he  ever  seen  it !  How  would  he  have  run  him 
up  and  down  the  gamut  of  simile !  If  a  fish,  then 
a  fish  with  wings  ;  if  a  bird,  then  a  bird,  with  fins  ; 
and  so  on,  keeping  up  the  light  shuttle-cock  of  a 
conceit  as  is  his  wont.  Indeed,  the  poor  thing  is 
the  most  killing  bait  for  a  comparison,  and  I  assure 
you  I  have  three  or  four  in  my  inkstand  ;  —  but  be 
calm,  they  shall  stay  there.  Moore,  who  looked 
on  all  nature  as  a  kind  of  Gradus  ad  Pamassum, 
a  thesaurus  of  similitude,  and  spent  his  life  in  a 
game  of  What  is  my  thought  like  ?  with  himself, 
did  the  flying-fish  on  his  way  to  Bermuda.  So 
I  leave  him  in  peace. 

The  most  beautiful  thing  I  have  seen  at  sea,  all 
the  more  so  that  I  had  never  heard  of  it,  is  the 
trail  of  a  shoal  of  fish  through  the  phosphorescent 
water.  It  is  like  a  flight  of  silver  rockets,  or  the 
streaming  of  northern  lights  through  that  silent 
nether  heaven.  I  thought  nothing  could  go  beyond 
that  rustling  star-foam  which  was  churned  up  by 
our  ship's  bows,  or  those  eddies  and  disks  of  dreamy 
flame  that  rose  and  wandered  out  of  sight  behind 
us. 

'T  was  fire  our  ship  was  plunging  through, 
Cold  fire  that  o'er  the  quarter  flew  ; 
And  wandering  moons  of  idle  flame 
Grew  full  and  waned,  and  went  and  came, 
Dappling  with  light  the  huge  sea-snake 
That  slid  behind  us  in  the  wake. 

But  there  was  something  even  more  delicately  rare 


104  LEA  VES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

in  the  apparition  of  the  fish,  as  they  turned  up  in 
gleaming  furrows  the  latent  moonshine  which  the 
ocean  seemed  to  have  hoarded  against  these  vacant 
interlunar  nights.  In  the  Mediterranean  one  day, 
as  we  were  lying  becalmed,  I  observed  the  water 
freckled  with  dingy  specks,  which  at  last  gathered 
to  a  pinkish  scum  on  the  surface.  The  sea  had 
been  so  phosphorescent  for  some  nights,  that  when 
the  Captain  gave  me  my  bath,  by  dousing  me  with 
buckets  from  the  house  on  deck,  the  spray  flew 
off  my  head  and  shoulders  in  sparks.  It  occurred 
to  me  that  this  dirty-looking  scum  might  be  the 
luminous  matter,  and  I  had  a  pailful  dipped  up  to 
keep  till  after  dark.  When  I  went  to  look  at  it 
after  nightfall,  it  seemed  at  first  perfectly  dead ; 
but  when  I  shook  it,  the  whole  broke  out  into  what 
I  can  only  liken  to  milky  flames,  whose  lambent 
silence  was  strangely  beautiful,  and  startled  me  al- 
most as  actual  projection  might  an  alchemist.  I 
could  not  bear  to  be  the  death  of  so  much  beauty ; 
so  I  poured  it  all  overboard  again. 

Another  sight  worth  taking  a  voyage  for  is  that 
of  the  sails  by  moonlight.  Our  course  was  "  south 
and  by  east,  half  south,"  so  that  we  seemed  bound 
for  the  full  moon  as  she  rolled  up  over  our  waver- 
ing horizon.  Then  I  used  to  go  forward  to  the 
bowsprit  and  look  back.  Our  ship  was  a  clipper, 
with  every  rag  set,  stunsails,  sky-scrapers,  and  all ; 
nor  was  it  easy  to  believe  that  such  a  wonder  could 
be  built  of  canvas  as  that  white  many-storied  pile 
of  cloud  that  stooped  over  me  or  drew  back  as  we 
rose  and  fell  with  the  waves. 


AT  SEA  105 

These  are  all  the  wonders  I  can  recall  of  my  five 
weeks  at  sea,  except  the  sun.  Were  you  ever  alone 
with  the  sun  ?  You  think  it  a  very  simple  ques- 
tion;  but  I  never  was,  in  the  full  sense  of  the 
word,  till  I  was  held  up  to  him  one  cloudless  day 
on  the  broad  buckler  of  the  ocean.  I  suppose  one 
might  have  the  same  feeling  in  the  desert.  I  re- 
member getting  something  like  it  years  ago,  when 
I  climbed  alone  to  the  top  of  a  mountain,  and  lay 
face  up  on  the  hot  gray  moss,  striving  to  get  a  no- 
tion of  how  an  Arab  might  feel.  It  was  my  Amer- 
ican commentary  of  the  Koran,  and  not  a  bad  one. 
In  a  New  England  winter,  too,  when  everything  is 
gagged  with  snow,  as  if  some  gigantic  physical  geo- 
grapher were  taking  a  cast  of  the  earth's  face  in 
plaster,  the  bare  knob  of  a  hill  will  introduce  you 
to  the  sun  as  a  comparative  stranger.  But  at  sea 
you  may  be  alone  with  him  day  after  day,  and 
almost  all  day  long.  I  never  understood  before 
that  nothing  short  of  full  daylight  can  give  the 
supremest  sense  of  solitude.  Darkness  will  not  do 
so,  for  the  imagination  peoples  it  with  more  shapes 
than  ever  were  poured  from  the  frozen  loins  of  the 
populous  North.  The  sun,  I  sometimes  think,  is  a 
little  grouty  at  sea,  especially  at  high  noon,  feeling 
that  he  wastes  his  beams  on  those  fruitless  furrows. 
It  is  otherwise  with  the  moon.  She  "  comforts  the 
night,"  as  Chapman  finely  says,  and  I  always  found 
her  a  companionable  creature. 

In  the  ocean-horizon  I  took  untiring  delight.  It 
is  the  true  magic-circle  of  expectation  and  conjec- 
ture, —  almost  as  good  as  a  wishing-ring.  What 


106  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

will  rise  over  that  edge  we  sail  towards  daily  and 
never  overtake  ?  A  sail  ?  an  island  ?  the  new 
shore  of  the  Old  World  ?  Something  rose  every 
day,  which  I  need  not  have  gone  so  far  to  see,  but 
at  whose  levee  I  was  a  much  more  faithful  courtier 
than  on  shore.  A  cloudless  sunrise  in  mid-ocean 
is  beyond  comparison  for  simple  grandeur.  It  is 
like  Dante's  style,  bare  and  perfect.  Naked  sun 
meets  naked  sea,  the  true  classic  of  nature.  There 
may  be  more  sentiment  in  morning  on  shore,  —  the 
shivering  fairy-jewelry  of  dew,  the  silver  point-lace 
of  sparkling  hoar-frost,  —  but  there  is  also  more 
complexity,  more  of  the  romantic.  The  one  savors 
of  the  elder  Edda,  the  other  of  the  Minnesingevs. 

And  I  thus  floating,  lonely  elf, 

A  kind  of  planet  by  myself, 

The  mists  draw  up  and  furl  away, 

And  in  the  east  a  warming  gray, 

Faint  as  the  tint  of  oaken  woods 

When  o'er  their  buds  May  breathes  and  broods, 

Tells  that  the  golden  sunrise-tide 

Is  lapsing  up  earth's  thirsty  side, 

Each  moment  purpling  on  the  crest 

Of  some  stark  billow  farther  west : 

And  as  the  sea-moss  droops  and  hears 

The  gurgling  flood  thatnears  and  nears, 

And  then  with  tremulous  content 

Floats  out  each  thankful  filament, 

So  waited  I  until  it  came, 

God's  daily  miracle,  —  O  shame 

That  I  had  seen  so  many  days 

Unthankful,  without  wondering  praise, 

Not  recking  more  this  bliss  of  earth 

Than  the  cheap  fire  that  lights  my  hearth  I 

But  now  glad  thoughts  and  holy  pour 

Into  my  heart,  as  once  a  year 

To  San  Miniato's  open  door, 


AT  SEA  107 

In  long-  procession,  chanting  clear, 

Through  slopes  of  sun,  through  shadows  hoar, 

The  coupled  monks  slow-climbing  sing, 

And  like  a  golden  censer  swing 

From  rear  to  front,  from  front  to  rear 

Their  alternating  bursts  of  praise, 

Till  the  roof's  fading  seraphs  gaze 

Down  through  an  odorous  mist,  that  crawls 

Lingeringly  up  the  darkened  walls, 

And  the  dim  arches,  silent  long, 

Are  startled  with  triumphant  song. 

I  wrote  yesterday  that  the  sea  still  rimmed  our 
prosy  lives  with  mystery  and  conjecture.  But  one 
is  shut  up  on  shipboard  like  Montaigne  in  his 
tower,  with  nothing  to  do  but  to  review  his  own 
thoughts  and  contradict  himself.  Dire,  redire,  et 
me  contredire,  will  be  the  staple  of  my  journal  till 
I  see  land.  I  say  nothing  of  such  matters  as  the 
montagna  bruna  on  which  Ulysses  wrecked ;  but 
since  the  sixteenth  century  could  any  man  reason- 
ably hope  to  stumble  on  one  of  those  wonders  which 
were  cheap  as  dirt  in  the  days  of  St.  Saga  ?  Faus- 
tus,  Don  Juan,  and  Tannhauser  are  the  last  ghosts 
of  legend,  that  lingered  almost  till  the  Gallic  cock- 
crow of  universal  enlightenment  and  disillusion. 
The  Public  School  has  done  for  Imagination.  What 
shall  I  see  in  Outre-Mer,  or  on  the  way  thither,  but 
what  can  be  seen  with  eyes  ?  To  be  sure,  I  stick 
by  the  sea-serpent,  and  would  fain  believe  that  sci- 
ence has  scotched,  not  killed  him.  Nor  is  he  to 
be  lightly  given  up,  for,  like  the  old  Scandinavian 
snake,  he  binds  together  for  us  the  two  hemispheres 
of  Past  and  Present,  of  Belief  and  Science.  He  is 
the  link  which  knits  us  seaboard  Yankees  with  our 


108  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

Norse  progenitors,  interpreting  between  the  age  of 
the  dragon  and  that  of  the  railroad-train.  We 
have  made  ducks  and  drakes  of  that  large  estate  of 
wonder  and  delight  bequeathed  to  us  by  ancestral 
vikings,  and  this  alone  remains  to  us  unthrif  t  Heirs 
of  Linn. 

I  feel  an  undefined  respect  for  a  man  who  has 
seen  the  sea-serpent.  He  is  to  his  brother-fishers 
what  the  poet  is  to  his  fellow-men.  Where  they 
have  seen  nothing  better  than  a  school  of  horse- 
mackerel,  or  the  idle  coils  of  ocean  round  Half-way 
Rock,  he  has  caught  authentic  glimpses  of  the  with- 
drawing mantle-hem  of  the  Edda  age.  I  care  not 
for  the  monster  himself.  It  is  not  the  thing,  but 
the  belief  in  the  thing,  that  is  dear  to  me.  May 
it  be  long  before  Professor  Owen  is  comforted  with 
the  sight  of  his  unfleshed  vertebrae,  long  before 
they  stretch  many  a  rood  behind  Kimball's  or  Bar- 
num's  glass,  reflected  in  the  shallow  orbs  of  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Public,  which  stare,  but  see  not!  I 
speak  of  him  in  the  singular  number,  for  I  insist 
on  believing  that  there  is  but  one  left,  without 
chance  of  duplicate.  When  we  read  that  Captain 
Spalding,  of  the  pink-stern  Three,  follies,  has  be- 
held him  rushing  through  the  brine  like  an  infinite 
series  of  bewitched  mackerel-casks,  we  feel  that  the 
mystery  of  old  Ocean,  at  least,  has  not  yet  been 
sounded,  —  that  Faith  and  Awe  survive  there  un- 
evaporate.  I  once  ventured  the  horse-mackerel 
theory  to  an  old  fisherman,  browner  than  a  tomcod. 
"  Hos-mackril !  "  he  exclaimed  indignantly,  "hos- 
mackril  be  — "  (here  he  used  a  phrase  commonly 


AT  SEA  109 

indicated  in  laical  literature  by  the  same  sign  which 
serves  for  Doctorate  in  Divinity,)  "  don't  yer  spose 
/  know  a  hos-mackril?  "  The  intonation  of  that 
"/"  would  have  silenced  Professor  Monkbarns 
Owen  with  his  provoking  phoca  forever.  What  if 
one  should  ask  him  if  he  knew  a  trilobite  ?  . 

The  fault  of  modern  travellers  is,  that  they  see 
nothing  out  of  sight.  They  talk  of  eocene  periods 
and  tertiary  formations,  and  tell  us  how  the  world 
looked  to  the  plesiosaur.  They  take  science  (or 
nescience)  with  them,  instead  of  that  soul  of  gener- 
ous trust  their  elders  had.  All  their  senses  are 
sceptics  and  doubters,  materialists  reporting  things 
for  other  sceptics  to  doubt  still  further  upon.  Na- 
ture becomes  a  reluctant  witness  upon  the  stand, 
badgered  with  geologist  hammers  and  phials  of  acid. 
There  have  been  no  travellers  since  those  included 
in  Hakluyt  and  Purchas,  except  Martin,  perhaps, 
who  saw  an  inch  or  two  into  the  invisible  at  the 
Western  Islands.  We  have  peripatetic  lecturers, 
but  no  more  travellers.  Travellers'  stories  are  no 
longer  proverbial.  We  have  picked  nearly  every 
apple  (wormy  or  otherwise)  from  the  world's  tree 
of  knowledge,  and  that  without  an  Eve  to  tempt  us. 
Two  or  three  have  hitherto  hung  luckily  beyond 
reach  on  a  lofty  bough  shadowing  the  interior  of 
Africa,  but  there  is  a  German  Doctor  at  this  very 
moment  pelting  at  them  with  sticks  and  stones.  It 
may  be  only  next  week,  and  these  too,  bitten  by 
geographers  and  geologists,  will  be  thrown  away. 

Analysis  is  carried  into  everything.  Even  Deity 
is  subjected  to  chemic  tests.  We  must  have  exact 


110  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

knowledge,  a  cabinet  stuck  full  of  facts  pressed, 
dried,  or  preserved  in  spirits,  instead  of  the  large, 
vague  world  our  fathers  had.  With  them  science 
was  poetry  ;  with  us,  poetry  is  science.  Our  modern 
Eden  is  a  Jiortus  siccus.  Tourists  defraud  rather 
than  enrich  us.  They  have  not  that  sense  of  ses- 
thetic  proportion  which  characterized  the  elder  trav- 
eller. Earth  is  no  longer  the  fine  work  of  art  it  was, 
for  nothing  is  left  to  the  imagination.  Job  Hortop, 
arrived  at  the  height  of  the  Bermudas,  thinks  it 
full  time  to  indulge  us  in  a  merman.  Nay,  there 
is  a  story  told  by  Webster,  in  his  Witchcraft,  of 
a  merman  with  a  mitre,  who,  on  being  sent  back 
to  his  watery  diocese  of  finland,  made  what  ad- 
vances he  could  toward  an  episcopal  benediction  by 
bowing  his  head  thrice.  Doubtless  he  had  been 
consecrated  by  St.  Antony  of  Padua.  A  dumb 
bishop  would  be  sometimes  no  unpleasant  phenom- 
enon, by  the  way.  Sir  John  Hawkins  is  not  satis- 
fied with  telling  us  about  the  merely  sensual  Cana- 
ries, but  is  generous  enough  to  throw  us  in  a  hand- 
ful of  "  certain  flitting  islands  "  to  boot.  Henry 
Hawkes  describes  the  visible  Mexican  cities,  and 
then  is  not  so  frugal  but  that  he  can  give  us  a  few 
invisible  ones.  Thus  do  these  generous  ancient 
mariners  make  children  of  us  again.  Their  succes- 
sors show  us  an  earth  effete  and  in  a  double  sense 
past  bearing,  tracing  out  with  the  eyes  of  indus- 
trious fleas  every  wrinkle  and  crowfoot. 

The  journals  of  the  elder  navigators  are  prose 
Odysseys.  The  geographies  of  our  ancestors  were 
works  of  fancy  and  imagination.  They  read  poems 


AT  SEA  111 

where  we  yawn  over  items.  Their  world  was  a 
huge  wonder-horn,  exhaustless  as  that  which  Thor 
strove  to  drain.  Ours  would  scarce  quench  the 
small  thirst  of  a  bee.  No  modern  voyager  brings 
back  the  magical  foundation-stones  of  a  Tempest. 
No  Marco  Polo,  traversing  the  desert  beyond  the 
city  of  Lok,  would  tell  of  things  able  to  inspire  the 
mind  of  Milton  with 

"  Calling  shapes  and  beckoning  shadows  dire, 
And  airy  tongues  that  syllable  men's  names 
On  sands  and  shores  and  desert  wildernesses." 

It  was  easy  enough  to  believe  the  story  of  Dante, 
when  two  thirds  of  even  the  upper-world  were  yet 
mitraversed  and  unmapped.  With  every  step  of 
the  recent  traveller  our  inheritance  of  the  wonder- 
ful is  diminished.  Those  beautifully  pictured 
notes  of  the  Possible  are  redeemed  at  a  ruinous  dis- 
count in  the  hard  and  cumbrous  coin  of  the  Actual. 
How  are  we  not  defrauded  and  impoverished  ?  Does 
California  vie  with  El  Dorado  ?  or  are  Bruce's 
Abyssinian  kings  a  set-off  for  Prester  John  ?  A 
bird  in  the  bush  is  worth  two  in  the  hand.  And 
if  the  philosophers  have  not  even  yet  been  able  to 
agree  whether  the  world  has  any  existence  inde- 
pendent of  ourselves,  how  do  we  not  gain  a  loss  in 
every  addition  to  the  catalogue  of  Vulgar  Errors  ? 
Where  are  the  fishes  which  nidificated  in  trees  ? 
Where  the  monopodes  sheltering  themselves  from 
the  sun  beneath  their  single  umbrella-like  foot, . — 
umbrella-like  in  everything  but  the  fatal  necessity 
of  being  borrowed?  Where  the  Acephali,  with 
whom  Herodotus,  in  a  kind  of  ecstasy,  wound  up 


112  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

his  climax  of  men  with  abnormal  top-pieces? 
Where  the  Roc  whose  eggs  are  possibly  boulders, 
needing  no  far-fetched  theory  of  glacier  or  iceberg 
to  account  for  them  ?  Where  the  tails  of  the  men 
of  Kent  ?  Where  the  no  legs  of  the  bird  of  para- 
dise ?  Where  the  Unicorn,  with  that  single  horn 
of  his,  sovereign  against  all  manner  of  poisons  ? 
Where  that  Thessalian  spring,  which,  without  cost 
to  the  country,  convicted  and  punished  perjurers  ? 
Where  the  Amazons  of  Orellana?  Where,  in  short, 
the  Fountain  of  Youth  ?  All  these,  and  a  thousand 
other  varieties,  we  have  lost,  and  have  got  nothing 
instead  of  them.  And  those  who  have  robbed  us 
of  them  have  stolen  that  which  not  enriches  them- 
selves. It  is  so  much  wealth  cast  into  the  sea  be- 
yond all  approach  of  diving-bells.  We  owe  no 
thanks  to  Mr.  J.  E.  Worcester,  whose  Geography 
we  studied  enforcedly  at  school.  Yet  even  he  had  his 
relentings,  and  in  some  softer  moment  vouchsafed 
us  a  fine,  inspiring  print  of  the  Maelstrom,  answer- 
able to  the  twenty-four  mile  diameter  of  its  suc- 
tion. Year  by  year,  more  and  more  of  the  world 
gets  disenchanted.  Even  the  icy  privacy  of  the 
arctic  and  antarctic  circles  is  invaded.  Our  youth 
are  no  longer  ingenuous,  as  indeed  no  ingenuity  is 
demanded  of  them.  Everything  is  accounted  for, 
everything  cut  and  dried,  and  the  world  may  be 
put  together  as  easily  as  the  fragments  of  a  dis- 
sected map.  The  Mysterious  bounds  nothing  now 
on  the  North,  South,  East,  or  West.  We  have 
played  Jack  Horner  with  our  earth,  till  there  is 
never  a  plum  left  in  it. 


IN  THE  MEDITERRANEAN  113 

II 

IN  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

The  first  sight  of  a  shore  so  historical  as  that  of 
Europe  gives  an  American  a  strange  thrill.  What 
we  always  feel  the  artistic  want  of  at  home  is  back- 
ground. It  is  all  idle  to  say  we  are  Englishmen, 
and  that  English  history  is  ours  too.  It  is  pre- 
cisely in  this  that  we  are  not  Englishmen,  inasmuch, 
as  we  only  possess  their  history  through  our  minds, 
and  not  by  life-long  association  with  a  spot  and  an 
idea  we  call  England.  History  without  the  soil  it 
grew  in  is  more  instructive  than  inspiring, —  an  ac- 
quisition, and  not  an  inheritance.  It  is  laid  away 
in  our  memories,  and  does  not  run  in  our  veins. 
Surely,  in  all  that  concerns  aesthetics,  Europeans 
have  us  at  an  immense  advantage.  They  start  at 
a  point  which  we  arrive  at  after  weary  years,  for 
literature  is  not  shut  up  in  books,  nor  art  in  gal- 
leries :  both  are  taken  in  by  unconscious  absorption 
through  the  finer  pores  of  mind  and  character  in 
the  atmosphere  of  society.  We  are  not  yet  out  of 
our  Crusoe-hood,  and  must  make  our  own  tools  as 
best  we  may.  Yet  I  think  we  shall  find  the  good 
of  it  one  of  these  days,  in  being  thrown  back  more 
wholly  on  nature ;  and  our  literature,  when  we 
have  learned  to  feel  our  own  strength,  and  to  re- 
spect our  own  thought  because  it  is  ours,  and  not 
because  the  European  Mrs.  Grundy  agrees  with 
it,  will  have  a  fresh  flavor  and  a  strong  body  that 
will  recommend  it,  especially  as  what  we  import 


114  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

is  watered  more  and  more  liberally  with  every  vin- 
tage. 

My  first  glimpse  of  Europe  was  the  shore  of 
Spain.  One  morning  a  cream-colored  blur  on  the 
now  unwavering  horizon's  edge  was  pointed  out  to 
me  as  Cadiz.  Since  we  got  into  the  Mediterranean, 
we  have  been  becalmed  for  some  days  within  easy 
view  of  land.  All  along  are  fine  mountains,  brown 
all  day,  and  with  a  bloom  on  them  at  sunset  like 
that  of  a  ripe  plum.  Here  and  there  at  their  feet 
little  white  towns  are  sprinkled  along  the  edge  of 
the  water,  like  the  grains  of  rice  dropped  by  the 
princess  in  the  story.  Sometimes  we  see  larger 
buildings  on  the  mountain  slopes,  probably  con- 
vents. I  sit  and  wonder  whether  the  farther  peaks 
may  not  be  the  Sierra  Morena  (the  rusty  saw)  of 
Don  Quixote.  I  resolve  that  they  shall  be,  and 
am  content.  Surely  latitude  and  longitude  never 
showed  me  any  particular  respect,  that  I  should  be 
over-scrupulous  with  them. 

But  after  all,  Nature,  though  she  may  be  more 
beautiful,  is  nowhere  so  entertaining  as  in  man, 
and  the  best  thing  I  have  seen  and  learned  at  sea 
is  our  Chief  Mate.  My  first  acquaintance  with 
him  was  made  over  my  knife,  which  he  asked  to 
look  at,  and,  after  a  critical  examination,  handed 
back  to  me,  saying,  "  I  should  n't  wonder  if  that 
'ere  was  a  good  piece  o'  stuff."  Since  then  he  has 
transferred  a  part  of  his  regard  for  my  knife  to  its 
owner.  I  like  folks  who  like  an  honest  bit  of  steel, 
and  take  no  interest  whatever  in  "  your  Eaphaels, 
Correggios,  and  stuff."  There  is  always  more  than 


IN   THE  MEDITERRANEAN  115 

the  average  human  nature  in  a  man  who  has  a 
hearty  sympathy  with  iron.  It  is  a  manly  metal, 
with  no  sordid  associations  like  gold  and  silver. 
My  sailor  fully  came  up  to  my  expectation  on 
further  acquaintance.  He  might  well  be  called  an 
old  salt  who  had  been  wrecked  on  Spitzbergen  be- 
fore I  was  born.  He  was  not  an  American,  but  I 
should  never  have  guessed  it  by  his  speech,  which 
was  the  purest  Cape  Cod,  and  I  reckon  myself  a 
good  taster  of  dialects.  Nor  was  he  less  Ameri- 
canized in  all  his  thoughts  and  feelings,  a  singular 
proof  of  the  ease  with  which  our  omnivorous  coun- 
try assimilates  foreign  matter,  provided  it  be  Prot- 
estant, for  he  was  a  grown  man  ere  he  became  an 
American  citizen.  He  used  to  walk  the  deck  with 
his  hands  in  his  pockets,  in  seeming  abstraction, 
but  nothing  escaped  his  eye.  How  he  saw,  I  could 
never  make  out,  though  I  had  a  theory  that  it  was 
with  his  elbows.  After  he  had  taken  me  (or  my 
knife)  into  his  confidence,  he  took  care  that  I 
should  see  whatever  he  deemed  of  interest  to  a 
landsman.  Without  looking  up,  he  would  say, 
suddenly,  "Ther's  a  whale  blowin'  clearn  up  to 
win'ard,"  or,  "  Them 's  porpises  to  leeward :  that 
means  change  o'  wind."  He  is  as  impervious  to 
cold  as  a  polar  bear,  and  paces  the  deck  during  his 
watch  much  as  one  of  those  yellow  hummocks  goes 
slumping  up  and  down  his  cage.  On  the  Atlan- 
tic, if  the  wind  blew  a  gale  from  the  northeast,  and 
it  was  cold  as  an  English  summer,  he  was  sure  to 
turn  out  in  a  calico  shirt  and  trousers,  his  furzy 
brown  chest  half  bare,  and  slippers,  without  stock- 


116  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

ings.  But  lest  you  might  fancy  this  to  have 
chanced  by  defect  of  wardrobe,  he  comes  out  in  a 
monstrous  pea-jacket  here  in  the  Mediterranean, 
when  the  evening  is  so  hot  that  Adam  would  have 
been  glad  to  leave  off  his  fig-leaves.  "  It 's  a  kind 
o'  damp  and  unwholesome  in  these  'ere  waters," 
he  says,  evidently  regarding  the  Midland  Sea  as  a 
vile  standing -pool,  in  comparison  with  the  bluff 
ocean.  At  meals  he  is  superb,  not  only  for  his 
strengths,  but  his  weaknesses.  He  has  some  how 
or  other  come  to  think  me  a  wag,  and  if  I  ask  him 
to  pass  the  butter,  detects  an  occult  joke,  and 
laughs  as  much  as  is  proper  for  a  mate.  For  you 
must  know  that  our  social  hierarchy  on  shipboard 
is  precise,  and  the  second  mate,  were  he  present, 
would  only  laugh  half  as  much  as  the  first.  Mr. 
X.  always  combs  his  hair,  and  works  himself  into 
a  black  frock-coat  (on  Sundays  he  adds  a  waist- 
coat) before  he  comes  to  meals,  sacrificing  himself 
nobly  and  painfully  to  the  social  proprieties.  The 
second  mate,  on  the  other  hand,  who  eats  after  us, 
enjoys  the  privilege  of  shirt-sleeves,  and  is,  I  think, 
the  happier  man  of  the  two.  We  do  not  have 
seats  above  and  below  the  salt,  as  in  old  time,  but 
above  and  below  the  white  sugar.  Mr.  X.  always 
takes  brown  sugar,  and  it  is  delightful  to  see  how 
he  ignores  the  existence  of  certain  delicates  which 
he  considers  above  his  grade,  tipping  his  head  on 
one  side  with  an  air  of  abstraction,  so  that  he  may 
seem  not  to  deny  himself,  but  to  omit  helping  him- 
self from  inadvertence  or  absence  of  mind.  At 
such  times  he  wrinkles  his  forehead  in  a  peculiar 


IN   THE  MEDITERRANEAN  117 

manner,  inscrutable  at  first  as  a  cuneiform  inscrip- 
tion, but  as  easily  read  after  you  once  get  the  key. 
The  sense  of  it  is  something  like  this :  "  I,  X., 
know  my  place,  a  height  of  wisdom  attained  by 
few.  Whatever  you  may  think,  I  do  not  see  that 
currant  jelly,  nor  that  preserved  grape.  Espe- 
cially, a  kind  Providence  has  made  me  blind  to 
bowls  of  white  sugar,  and  deaf  to  the  pop  of  cham- 
pagne corks.  It  is  much  that  a  merciful  compen- 
sation gives  me  a  sense  of  the  dingier  hue  of  Ha- 
vana, and  the  muddier  gurgle  of  beer.  Are  there 
potted  meats  ?  My  physician  has  ordered  me  three 
pounds  of  minced  salt-junk  at  every  meal."  There 
is  such  a  thing,  you  know,  as  a  ship's  husband : 
X.  is  the  ship's  poor  relation. 

As  I  have  said,  he  takes  also  a  below-the-white- 
sugar  interest  in  the  jokes,  laughing  by  precise 
point  of  compass,  just  as  he  would  lay  the  ship's 
course,  all  yawing  being  out  of  the  question  with 
his  scrupulous  decorum  at  the  helm.  Once  or 
twice  I  have  got  the  better  of  him,  and  touched 
him  off  into  a  kind  of  compromised  explosion,  like 
that  of  damp  fireworks,  that  splutter  and  simmer 
a  little,  and  then  go  out  with  painful  slowness  and 
occasional  relapses.  But  his  fuse  is  always  of  the 
unwillingest,  and  you  must  blow  your  match,  and 
touch  him  off  again  and  again  with  the  same  joke. 
Or  rather,  you  must  magnetize  him  many  times  to 
get  him  en  rapport  with  a  jest.  This  once  accom- 
plished, you  have  him,  and  one  bit  of  fun  will  last 
the  whole  voyage.  He  prefers  those  of  one  sylla- 
ble, the  a-b  abs  of  humor.  The  gradual  fattening 


118  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

of  the  steward,  a  benevolent  mulatto  with  whiskers 
and  ear-rings,  who  looks  as  if  he  had  been  meant 
for  a  woman,  and  had  become  a  man  by  accident, 
as  in  some  of  those  stories  of  the  elder  physiolo- 
gists, is  an  abiding  topic  of  humorous  comment 
with  Mr.  X.  "  That  'ere  stooard,"  he  says,  with  a 
brown  grin  like  what  you  might  fancy  on  the  face 
of  a  serious  and  aged  seal,  "  's  agittin'  as  fat  's  a 
porpis.  He  was  as  thin  's  a  shingle  when  he  come 
aboord  last  v'yge.  Them  trousis  '11  bust  yit.  He 
don't  darst  take  'em  off  nights,  for  the  whole  ship's 
company  could  n't  git  him  into  'em  agin."  And 
then  he  turns  aside  to  enjoy  the  intensity  of  his 
emotion  by  himself,  and  you  hear  at  intervals  low 
rumblings,  an  indigestion  of  laughter.  He  tells  me 
of  St.  Elmo's  fires,  Marvell's  corposants,  though 
with  him  the  original  corpos  santos  has  suffered 
a  sea  change,  and  turned  to  comepleasants,  pledges 
of  fine  weather.  I  shall  not  soon  find  a  pleas- 
anter  companion.  It  is  so  delightful  to  meet  a 
man  who  knows  just  what  you  do  not.  Nay,  I  think 
the  tired  mind  finds  something  in  plump  ignorance 
like  what  the  body  feels  in  cushiony  moss.  Talk 
of  the  sympathy  of  kindred  pursuits !  It  is  the 
sympathy  of  the  upper  and  nether  millstones,  both 
forever  grinding  the  same  grist,  and  wearing  each 
other  smooth.  One  has  not  far  to  seek  for  book- 
nature,  artist-nature,  every  variety  of  superinduced 
uature,  in  short,  but  genuine  human-nature  is  hard 
to  find.  And  how  good  it  is !  Wholesome  as  a 
potato,  fit  company  for  any  dish.  The  freemasonry 
of  cultivated  men  is  agreeable,  but  artificial,  and  I 


72V  THE  MEDITERRANEAN  119 

like  better  the  natural  grip  with  which  manhood 
recognizes  manhood. 

X.  has  one  good  story,  and  with  that  I  leave 
him,  wishing  him  with  all  my  heart  that  little  in- 
land farm  at  last  which  is  his  calenture  as  he  paces 
the  windy  deck.  One  evening,  when  the  clouds 
looked  wild  and  whirling,  I  asked  X.  if  it  was 
coming  on  to  blow.  "  No, "  .guess  not,"  said  he  ; 
"  bumby  the  moon  '11  be  up,  and  scoff  away  that 
'ere  loose  stuff."  His  intonation  set  the  phrase 
"  scoff  away  "  in  quotation-marks  as  plain  as  print. 
So  I  put  a  query  in  each  eye,  and  he  went  on. 
"  Ther'  was  a  Dutch  cappen  onct,  an'  his  mate 
come  to  him  in  the  cabin,  where  he  sot  takin'  his 
schnapps,  an'  says,  '  Cappen,  it 's  agittin'  thick,  an' 
looks  kin'  o'  squally,  hed  n't  we  's  good  's  shorten 
sail?'  'Gimmy  my  alminick,'  says  the  cappen. 
So  he  looks  at  it  a  spell,  an'  says  he,  *  The  moon  's 
doo  in  less  'n  half  an  hour,  an'  she  '11  scoff  away 
ev'ythin'  clare  agin.'  So  the  mate  he  goes,  an' 
bumby  down  he  comes  agin,  an'  says,  'Cappen, 
this  'ere  's  the  allfiredest,  powerfullest  moon  't  ever 
you  did  see.  She  's  scoffed  away  the  maintogal- 
lants'l,  an'  she 's  to  work  on  the  foretops'l  now. 
Guess  you  'd  better  look  in  the  alminick  agin,  an' 
fin'  out  when  this  moon  sets.'  So  the  cappen 
thought  't  was  'bout  time  to  go  on  deck.  Dreadful 
slow  them  Dutch  cappens  be."  And  X.  walked 
away,  rumbling  inwardly,  like  the  rote  of  the  sea 
heard  afar. 

And  so  we  arrived  at  Malta.  Did  you  ever  hear 
of  one  of  those  eating-houses,  where,  for  a  certain 


120  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

fee,  the  guest  has  the  right  to  make  one  thrust 
with  a  fork  into  a  huge  pot,  in  which  the  whole 
dinner  is  bubbling,  getting  perhaps  a  bit  of  boiled 
meat,  or  a  potato,  or  else  nothing?  Well,  when 
the  great  caldron  of  war  is  seething,  and  the  na- 
tions stand  round  it  striving  to  fish  out  something 
to  their  purpose  from  the  mess,  Britannia  always 
has  a  great  advantage  in  her  trident.  Malta  is 
one  of  the  titbits  she  has  impaled  with  that  awful 
implement.  I  was  not  sorry  for  it,  when  I  reached 
my  clean  inn,  with  its  kindly  English  landlady. 


Ill 

ITALY 

The  father  of  the  celebrated  Mr.  Jonathan  Wild 
was  in  the  habit  of  saying,  that  "travelling  was 
travelling  in  one  part  of  the  world  as  well  as  an- 
other ;  it  consisted  in  being  such  a  time  from 
home,  and  in  traversing  so  many  leagues  ;  and  he 
appealed  to  experience  whether  most  of  our  travel- 
lers in  France  and  Italy  did  not  prove  at  their  re- 
turn that  they  might  have  been  sent  as  profitably 
to  Norway  and  Greenland."  Fielding  himself,  the 
author  of  this  sarcasm,  was  a  very  different  kind  of 
traveller,  as  his  Lisbon  journal  shows ;  but  we  think 
he  told  no  more  than  the  truth  in  regard  to  the  far 
greater  part  of  those  idle  people  who  powder  them- 
selves with  dust  from  the  highways  and  blur  their 
memories  with  a  whirl  through  the  galleries  of 
Europe.  They  go  out  empty,  to  come  home  unpro- 


ITALY  121 

fitably  full.  They  go  abroad  to  escape  themselves, 
and  fail,  as  Goethe  says  they  always  must,  in  the 
attempt  to  jump  away  from  their  own  shadows. 
And  yet  even  the  dullest  man,  if  he  went  honestly 
about  it,  might  bring  home  something  worth  hav- 
ing from  the  dullest  place.  If  Ovid,  instead  of  sen- 
timentalizing in  the  Tristia,  had  left  behind  him 
a  treatise  on  the  language  of  the  Getae  which  he 
learned,  we  should  have  thanked  him  for  something 
more  truly  valuable  than  all  his  poems.  Could 
men  only  learn  how  comfortably  the  world  can  get 
along  without  the  various  information  which  they 
bring  home  about  themselves  !  Honest  observation 
and  report  will  long  continue,  we  fear,  to  be  one  of 
the  rarest  of  human  things,  so  much  more  easily 
are  spectacles  to  be  had  than  eyes,  so  much  cheaper 
is  fine  writing  than  exactness.  Let  any  one  who 
has  sincerely  endeavored  to  get  anything  like  facts 
with  regard  to  the  battles  of  our  civil  war  only  con- 
sider how  much  more  he  has  learned  concerning 
the  splendid  emotions  of  the  reporter  than  the 
events  of  the  fight,  (unless  he  has  had  the  good 
luck  of  a  peep  into  the  correspondence  of  some 
pricelessly  uncultivated  private,)  and  he  will  feel 
that  narrative,  simple  as  it  seems,  can  be  well  done 
by  two  kinds  of  men  only,  • —  those  of  the  highest 
genius  and  culture,  and  those  wholly  without  either. 
It  gradually  becomes  clear  to  us  that  the  easiest 
things  can  be  done  with  ease  only  by  the  very  few- 
est people,  and  those  specially  endowed  to  that  end. 
The  English  language,  for  instance,  can  show  but 
one  sincere  diarist,  Pepys  ',  and  yet  it  should  seem 


122  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

a  simple  matter  enough  to  jot  down  the  events  of 
every  day  for  one's  self  without  thinking  of  Mrs. 
Posterity  Grundy,  who  has  a  perverse  way,  as  if 
she  were  a  testatrix  and  not  an  heir,  of  forgetting 
precisely  those  who  pay  most  assiduous  court  to 
her.  One  would  think,  too,  that  to  travel  and  tell 
what  you  have  seen  should  be  tolerably  easy ;  but 
in  ninety-nine  books  out  of  a  hundred  does  not  the 
tourist  bore  us  with  the  sensations  he  thinks  he 
ought  to  have  experienced,  instead  of  letting  us 
know  what  he  saw  and  felt  ?  If  authors  would  only 
consider  that  the  way  to  write  an  enlivening  book 
is  not  by  seeing  and  saying  just  what  would  be  ex- 
pected of  them,  but  precisely  the  reverse,  the  public 
would  be  gainers.  What  tortures  have  we  not  seen 
the  worthiest  people  go  through  in  endeavoring  to 
get  up  the  appropriate  emotion  before  some  famous 
work  in  a  foreign  gallery,  when  the  only  sincere 
feeling  they  had  was  a  praiseworthy  desire  to  es- 
cape !  If  one  does  not  like  the  Venus  of  Melos,  let 
him  not  fret  about  it,  for  he  may  be  sure  she  never 
wiU. 

Montaigne  felt  obliged  to  separate  himself  from 
travelling-companions  whose  only  notion  of  their 
function  was  that  of  putting  so  many  leagues  a 
day  behind  them.  His  theory  was  that  of  Ulys- 
ses, who  was  not  content  with  seeing  the  cities  of 
many  men,  but  would  learn  their  minds  also.  And 
this  way  of  taking  time  enough,  while  we  think  it 
the  best  everywhere,  is  especially  excellent  in  a 
country  so  much  the  reverse  oifast  as  Italy,  where 
impressions  need  to  steep  themselves  in  the  sun 


ITALY  123 

and  ripen  slowly  as  peaches,  and  where  carpe  diem 
should  be  translated  take  your  own  time.  But  is 
there  any  particular  reason  why  everybody  should 
go  to  Italy,  or,  having  done  so,  should  tell  every- 
body else  what  he  supposes  he  ought  to  have  seen 
there  ?  Surely,  there  must  be  some  adequate  cause 
for  so  constant  an  effect. 

Boswell,  in  a  letter  to  Sir  Andrew  Mitchell,  says, 
that,  if  he  could  only  see  Rome,  "  it  would  give  him 
talk  for  a  lifetime."  The  utmost  stretch  of  his 
longing  is  to  pass  "  four  months  on  classic  ground," 
after  which  he  will  come  back  to  Auchinleck  uti 
conviva  satur,  —  a  condition  in  which  we  fear  the 
poor  fellow  returned  thither  only  too  often,  though 
unhappily  in  no  metaphorical  sense.  We  rather 
think,  that,  apart  from  the  pleasure  of  saying  he 
had  been  there,  Boswell  was  really  drawn  to  Italy 
by  the  fact  that  it  was  classic  ground,  and  this  not 
so  much  by  its  association  with  great  events  as  with 
great  men,  for  whom,  with  all  his  weaknesses,  he 
had  an  invincible  predilection.  But  Italy  has  a 
magnetic  virtue  quite  peculiar  to  her,  which  com- 
pels alike  steel  and  straw,  finding  something  in 
men  of  the  most  diverse  temperaments  by  which  to 
draw  them  to  herself.  Like  the  Siren,  she  sings 
to  every  voyager  a  different  song,  that  lays  hold  on 
the  special  weakness  of  his  nature.  The  German 
goes  thither  because  Winckelmann  and  Goethe 
went,  and  because  he  can  find  there  a  sausage 
stronger  than  his  own  ;  the  Frenchman,  that  he 
may  flavor  his  infidelity  with  a  bitter  dash  of  Ul- 
tramontanism,  or  find  fresher  zest  in  his  chattering 


124  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

boulevard  after  the  sombre  loneliness  of  Rome  ; 
the  Englishman,  because  the  same  Providence  that 
hears  the  young  ravens  when  they  cry  is  careful  to 
furnish  prey  to  the  courier  also,  and  because  his 
money  will  make  him  a  Milor  in  partibus.  But 
to  the  American,  especially  if  he  be  of  an  imagi- 
native temper,  Italy  has  a  deeper  charm.  She 
gives  him  cheaply  what  gold  cannot  buy  for  him  at 
home,  a  Past  at  once  legendary  and  authentic,  and 
in  which  he  has  an  equal  claim  with  every  other 
foreigner.  In  England  he  is  a  poor  relation  whose 
right  in  the  entail  of  home  traditions  has  been 
docked  by  revolution ;  of  France  his  notions  are 
purely  English,  and  he  can  scarce  help  feeling 
something  like  contempt  for  a  people  who  habitu- 
ally conceal  their  meaning  in  French ;  but  Rome 
is  the  mother-country  of  every  boy  who  has  de- 
voured Plutarch  or  taken  his  daily  doses  of  Flo- 
rus.  Italy  gives  us  antiquity  with  good  roads,  cheap 
living,  and,  above  all,  a  sense  of  freedom  from 
responsibility.  For  him  who  has  escaped  thither 
there  is  no  longer  any  tyranny  of  public  opinion  > 
its  fetters  drop  from  his  limbs  when  he  touches 
that  consecrated  shore,  and  he  rejoices  in  the  re- 
covery of  his  own  individuality.  He  is  no  longer 
met  at  every  turn  with  "  Under  which  king,  bezo- 
nian  ?  Speak,  or  die  !  "  He  is  not  forced  to  take 
one  side  or  the  other  about  table-tipping,  or  the 
merits  of  General  Blank,  or  the  constitutionality 
of  anarchy.  He  has  found  an  Eden  where  he  need 
not  hide  his  natural  self  in  the  livery  of  any  opin- 
ion, and  may  be  as  happy  as  Adam,  if  he  be  wise 


ITALY  125 

enough  to  keep  clear  of  the  apple  of  High  Art. 
This  may  be  very  weak,  but  it  is  also  very  agree- 
able to  certain  temperaments ;  and  to  be  weak  is 
to  be  miserable  only  where  it  is  a  duty  to  be  strong. 

Coming  from  a  country  where  everything  seems 
shifting  like  a  quicksand,  where  men  shed  their 
homes  as  snakes  their  skins,  where  you  may  meet  a 
three-story  house,  or  even  a  church,  on  the  high- 
way, bitten  by  the  universal  gad-fly  of  bettering  its 
position,  where  we  have  known  a  tree  to  be  cut 
down  merely  because  "it  had  got  to  be  so  old," 
the  sense  of  permanence,  unchangeableness,  and 
repose  which  Italy  gives  us  is  delightful.  The 
oft-repeated  non  e  piu  come  era  prima  may  be 
true  enough  of  Rome  politically,  but  it  is  not  true 
of  it  in  most  other  respects.  To  be  sure,  gas  and 
railroads  have  got  in  at  last ;  but  one  may  still 
read  by  a  lucerna  and  travel  by  vettura,  if  he  like, 
using  Alberti  as  a  guide-book,  and  putting  up  at 
the  Bear  as  a  certain  keen-eyed  Gascon  did  three 
centuries  ago. 

There  is,  perhaps,  no  country  with  which  we  are 
so  intimate  as  with  Italy,  —  none  of  which  we  are 
always  so  willing  to  hear  more.  Poets  and  prosers 
have  alike  compared  her  to  a  beautiful  woman  ; 
and  while  one  finds  nothing  but  loveliness  in  her, 
another  shudders  at  her  fatal  fascination.  She  is 
the  very  Witch- Venus  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Roger 
Ascham  says,  "  I  was  once  in  Italy  myself,  but  I 
thank  God  my  abode  there  was  but  nine  days  ;  and 
yet  I  saw  in  that  little  time,  in  one  city,  more  lib- 
erty to  sin  than  ever  I  heard  tell  of  in  our  noble 


126  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

city  of  London  in  nine  years."  He  quotes  triumph- 
antly the  proverb,  —  Inglese  italianato,  diavolo  in- 
carnato.  A  century  later,  the  entertaining  "  Rich- 
ard Lassels,  Gent.,  who  Travelled  through  Italy 
Five  times  as  Tutor  to  several  of  the  English  No- 
bility and  Gentry,"  and  who  is  open  to  new  engage- 
ments in  that  kind,  declares,  that,  "  For  the  Coun- 
try itself,  it  seemed  to  me  to  be  Nature  s  Darling, 
and  the  Eldest  Sister  of  all  other  Countries ;  car- 
rying away  from  them  all  the  greatest  blessings  and 
favours,  and  receiving  such  gracious  looks  from  the 
Sun  and  Heaven,  that,  if  there  be  any  fault  in 
Italy,  it  is,  that  her  Mother  Nature  hath  cockered 
her  too  much,  even  to  make  her  become  Wanton." 
Plainly,  our  Tannhauser  is  but  too  ready  to  go  back 
to  the  Venus-berg ! 

Another  word  about  Italy  seems  a  dangerous  ex- 
periment. Has  not  all  been  told  and  told  and  told 
again  ?  Is  it  not  one  chief  charm  of  the  land,  that 
it  is  changeless  without  being  Chinese  ?  Did  not 
Abbot  Samson,  in  1159,  Scotti  hdbitum  induens, 
(which  must  have  shown  his  massive  calves  to 
great  advantage,)  probably  see  much  the  same  pop- 
ular characteristics  that  Hawthorne  saw  seven  hun- 
dred years  later  ?  Shall  a  man  try  to  be  entertain- 
ing after  Montaigne,  aesthetic  after  Winckelmann, 
wise  after  Goethe,  or  trenchant  after  Forsyth? 
Can  he  hope  to  bring  back  anything  so  useful  as 
the  fork,  which  honest  Tom  Coryate  made  prize  of 
two  centuries  and  a  half  ago,  and  put  into  the 
greasy  fingers  of  Northern  barbarians  ?  Is  not 
the  Descrittione  of  Leandro  Alberti  still  a  com- 


ITALY  127 

petent  itinerary  ?  And  can  one  hope  to  pick  up  a 
fresh  Latin  quotation,  when  Addison  and  Eustace 
have  been  before  him  with  their  scrap-baskets  ? 

If  there  be  anything  which  a  person  of  even 
moderate  accomplishments  may  be  presumed  to 
know,  it  is  Italy.  The  only  open  question  left 
seems  to  be,  whether  Shakespeare  were  the  only 
man  that  could  write  his  name  who  had  never  been 
there.  I  have  read  my  share  of  Italian  travels, 
both  in  prose  and  verse,  but,  as  the  nicely  discrimi- 
nating Dutchman  found  that  "  too  moch  lager-beer 
was  too  moch,  but  too  moch  brahndee  was  jost 
hright,"  so  I  am  inclined  to  say  that  too  much 
Italy  is  just  what  we  want.  After  Des  Brosses,  we 
are  ready  for  Henri  Beyle,  and  Ampere,  and  Hil- 
lard,  and  About,  and  Gallenga,  and  Julia  Kava- 
nagh ;  Corinne  only  makes  us  hungry  for  George 
Sand.  That  no  one  can  tell  us  anything  new  is  as 
undeniable  as  the  compensating  fact  that  no  one 
can  tell  us  anything  too  old. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  travellers,  —  those  who 
tell  us  what  they  went  to  see,  and  those  who  tell 
us  what  they  saw.  The  latter  class  are  the  only 
ones  whose  journals  are  worth  the  sifting  ;  and  the 
value  of  their  eyes  depends  on  the  amount  of  indi- 
vidual character  they  took  with  them,  and  of  the 
previous  culture  that  had  sharpened  and  tutored 
the  faculty  of  observation.  In  our  conscious  age 
the  frankness  and  naivete  of  the  elder  voyagers  is 
impossible,  and  we  are  weary  of  those  humorous 
confidences  on  the  subject  of  fleas  with  which  we 
are  favored  by  some  modern  travellers,  whose 


128  LEAVES   FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

motto  should  be  (slightly  altered)  from  Horace,  — 
Flea-bit,  et  toto  cantabitur  urbe.  A  naturalist  self- 
sacrificing  enough  may  have  this  experience  nearer 
home. 

The  impulse  which  sent  the  Edelmann  Storg 
and  me  to  Subiaco  was  given  something  like  two 
thousand  years  ago.  Had  we  not  seen  the  Ponte 
Sant'  Antonio,  we  should  not  have  gone  to  Subiaco 
at  this  particular  time  ;  and  had  the  Romans  been 
worse  masons,  or  more  ignorant  of  hydrodynamics 
than  they  were,  we  should  never  have  seen  the 
Ponte  Sant'  Antonio.  But  first  we  went  to  Tivoli, 
—  two  carriage-loads  of  us,  a  very  agreeable  mix- 
ture of  English,  Scots,  and  Yankees,  —  on  Tues- 
day, the  20th  April.  I  shall  not  say  anything 
about  Tivoli.  A  water-fall  in  type  is  likely  to 
be  a  trifle  stiffish.  Old  association  and  modern 
beauty  ;  nature  and  artifice  ;  worship  that  has 
passed  away  and  the  religion  that  abides  forever  ; 
the  green  gush  of  the  deeper  torrent  and  the  white 
evanescence  of  innumerable  cascades,  delicately  pal- 
pitant as  a  fall  of  northern  lights ;  the  descendants 
of  Sabine  pigeons  flashing  up  to  immemorial  dove- 
cots, for  centuries  inaccessible  to  man,  trooping 
with  noisy  rooks  and  daws ;  the  fitful  roar  and  the 
silently  hovering  iris,  which,  borne  by  the  wind 
across  the  face  of  the  cliff,  transmutes  the  traver- 
tine to  momentary  opal,  and  whose  dimmer  ghost 
haunts  the  moonlight,  —  as  well  attempt  to  describe 
to  a  Papuan  savage  that  wondrous  ode  of  Words- 
worth which  rouses  and  stirs  in  the  soul  all  its  dor- 


ITALY  129 

mant  instincts  of  resurrection  as  with  a  sound  of 
the  last  trumpet.  No,  it  is  impossible.  Even  By- 
ron's pump  sucks  sometimes,  and  gives  an  unpleas- 
ant dry  wheeze,  especially,  it  seems  to  me,  at  Terni. 
It  is  guide-book  poetry,  enthusiasm  manufactured 
by  the  yard,  which  the  hurried  traveller  (John 
and  Jonathan  are  always  in  a  hurry  when  they 
turn  peripatetics)  puts  on  when  he  has  not  a  rag 
of  private  imagination  to  cover  his  nakedness 
withal.  It  must  be  a  queer  kind  of  love  that  could 
"  watch  madness  with  unalterable  mien,"  when  the 
patient,  whom  any  competent  physician  would  have 
ordered  into  a  strait-waistcoat  long  ago,  has  shiv- 
ered himself  to  powder  down  a  precipice.  But 
there  is  no  madness  in  the  matter.  Velino  goes 
over  in  his  full  senses,  and  knows  perfectly  well 
that  he  shall  not  be  hurt,  that  his  broken  frag- 
ments will  reunite  more  glibly  than  the  head  and 
neck  of  Orrilo.  He  leaps  exultant,  as  to  his 
proper  doom  and  fulfilment,  and  out  of  the  mere 
waste  and  spray  of  his  glory  the  god  of  sunshine 
and  song  builds  over  the  crowning  moment  of  his 
destiny  a  triumphal  arch  beyond  the  reach  of  time 
and  of  decay. 

The  first  day  we  made  the  Giro,  coming  back  to 
a  merry  dinner  at  the  Sibilla  in  the  evening.  Then 
we  had  some  special  tea,  —  for  the  Italians  think 
tea-drinking  the  chief  religious  observance  of  the 
Inglesi,  —  and  then  we  had  fifteen  pauls'  worth  of 
illumination,  which  wrought  a  sudden  change  in  the 
scenery,  like  those  that  seem  so  matter-of-course  in 
dreams,  turning  the  Claude  we  had  seen  in  the 


130  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

morning  into  a  kind  of  Piranesi-Rembrandt.  The 
illumination,  by  the  way,  which  had  been  prefig- 
ured to  us  by  the  enthusiastic  Italian  who  conducted 
it  as  something  second  only  to  the  Girandola, 
turned  out  to  be  one  blue-light  and  two  armf uls  of 
straw. 

The  Edehnann  Storg  is  not  fond  of  pedestrian 
locomotion,  —  nay,  I  have  even  sometimes  thought 
that  he  looked  upon  the  invention  of  legs  as  a  pri- 
vate and  personal  wrong  done  to  himself.  I  am 
quite  sure  that  he  inwardly  believes  them  to  have 
been  a  consequence  of  the  fall,  and  that  the  happier 
Pre-Adamites  were  monopodes,  and  incapable  of 
any  but  a  vehicular  progression.  A  carriage,  with 
horses  and  driver  complete,  he  takes  to  be  as  simple 
a  production  of  nature  as  a  potato.  But  he  is  fond 
of  sketching,  and  after  breakfast,  on  the  beautiful 
morning  of  Wednesday,  the  21st,  I  persuaded  him 
to  walk  out  a  mile  or  two  and  see  a  fragment  of 
aqueduct  ruin.  It  is  a  single  glorious  arch,  but- 
tressing the  mountain-side  upon  the  edge  of  a  sharp 
descent  to  the  valley  of  the  Anio.  The  old  road  to 
Subiaco  passes  under  it,  and  it  is  crowned  by  a 
crumbling  tower  built  in  the  Middle  Ages  (when- 
ever that  was)  against  the  Gaetani.  While  Storg 
sketched,  I  clambered.  Below  you,  where  the  val- 
ley widens  greenly  towards  other  mountains,  which 
the  ripe  Italian  air  distances  with  a  bloom  like  that 
on  unplucked  grapes,  are  more  arches,  ossified  arte- 
ries of  what  was  once  the  heart  of  the  world. 
Storg's  sketch  was  highly  approved  of  by  Leopoldo, 
our  guide,  and  by  three  or  four  peasants,  who, 


ITALY  131 

being  on  their  way  to  their  morning's  work  in  the 
fields,  had,  of  course,  nothing  in  particular  to  do, 
and  stopped  to  see  us  see  the  ruin.  Any  one  who 
has  remarked  how  grandly  the  Romans  do  nothing 
will  be  slow  to  believe  them  an  effete  race.  Their 
style  is  as  the  colossal  to  all  other,  and  the  name  of 
Eternal  City  fits  Rome  also,  because  time  is  of  no 
account  in  it.  The  Roman  always  waits  as  if  he 
could  afford  it  amply,  and  the  slow  centuries  move 
quite  fast  enough  for  him.  Time  is  to  other  races 
the  field  of  a  task-master,  which  they  must  painfully 
till ;  but  to  the  Roman  it  is  an  entailed  estate, 
which  he  enjoys  and  will  transmit.  The  Neapoli- 
tan's laziness  is  that  of  a  loafer ;  the  Roman's  is 
that  of  a  noble.  The  poor  Anglo-Saxon  must  count 
his  hours,  and  look  twice  at  his  small  change  of 
quarters  and  minutes ;  but  the  Roman  spends  from 
a  purse  of  Fortunatus.  His  piccolo  quarto  d'ora 
is  like  his  grosso,  a  huge  piece  of  copper,  big 
enough  for  a  shield,  which  stands  only  for  a  half- 
dime  of  our  money.  We  poor  fools  of  time  always 
hurry  as  if  we  were  the  last  type  of  man,  the  full 
stop  with  which  Fate  was  closing  the  colophon  of 
her  volume,  as  if  we  had  just  read  in  our  news- 
paper, as  we  do  of  the  banks  on  holidays,  JH^*"  The 
world  will  close  to-day  at  twelve  o'clock,  an  hour 
earlier  than  usual.  But  the  Roman  is  still  an 
Ancient,  with  a  vast  future  before  him  to  tame  and 
occupy.  He  and  his  ox  and  his  plough  are  just  as 
they  were  in  Virgil's  time  or  Ennius's.  We  beat 
him  in  many  things ;  but  in  the  impregnable  fast- 
ness of  his  great  rich  nature  he  defies  us. 


132  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

We  got  back  to  Tivoli,  —  Storg  affirming  that  lie 
had  walked  fifteen  miles.  We  saw  the  Temple  of 
Cough,  which  is  not  the  Temple  of  Cough,  though 
it  might  have  been  a  votive  structure  put  up  by 
some  Tiburtine  Dr.  Wistar.  We  saw  the  villa  of 
Mascenas,  which  is  not  the  villa  of  Maecenas,  and 
other  equally  satisfactory  antiquities.  All  our  Eng- 
lish friends  sketched  the  Citadel,  of  course,  and 
one  enthusiast  attempted  a  likeness  of  the  fall, 
which  I  unhappily  mistook  afterward  for  a  sem- 
blance of  the  tail  of  one  of  the  horses  on  the  Monte 
Cavallo.  Then  we  went  to  the  Villa  d' Este,  fa- 
mous on  Ariosto's  account,  —  and  which  Ariosto 
never  saw.  But  the  laurels  were  worthy  to  have 
made  a  chaplet  for  him,  and  the  cypresses  and  the 
views  were  as  fine  as  if  he  had  seen  them  every 
day  of  his  life. 

Perhaps  something  I  learned  in  going  to  see  one 
of  the  gates  of  the  town  is  more  to  the  purpose, 
and  may  assist  one  in  erecting  the  horoscope  of 
Italia  Unita.  When  Leopoldo  first  proposed  to 
drag  me  through  the  mud  to  view  this  interesting 
piece  of  architecture,  I  demurred.  But  as  he  was 
very  earnest  about  it,  and  as  one  seldom  fails  get- 
ting at  a  bit  of  character  by  submitting  to  one's 
guide,  I  yielded.  Arrived  at  the  spot,  he  put  me 
at  the  best  point  of  view,  and  said,  — 

"  Behold,  Lordship !  " 

"  I  see  nothing  out  of  the  common,"  said  I. 

"  Lordship  is  kind  enough  here  to  look  at  a  gate, 
the  like  of  which  exists  not  in  all  Italy,  nay,  in  the 
whole  world,  —  I  speak  not  of  England,"  for  he 
thought  me  an  Inglese. 


ITALY  133 

"  I  am  not  blind,  Leopoldo  ;  where  is  the  mira- 
cle?" 

"  Here  we  dammed  up  the  waters  of  the  Anio, 
first  by  artifice  conducted  to  this  spot,  aud  letting 
them  out  upon  the  Romans,  who  stood  besieging 
the  town,  drowned  almost  a  whole  army  of  them. 
(Lordship  conceives  ?)  They  suspected  nothing  till 
they  found  themselves  all  torn  to  pieces  at  the  foot 
of  the  hill  yonder.  (Lordship  conceives  ?)  Eh  I 
per  JBacco  !  we  watered  their  porridge  for  them." 

Leopoldo  used  we  as  Lord  Buchan  did  /,  mean- 
ing any  of  his  ancestors. 

"  But  tell  me  a  little,  Leopoldo,  how  many  years 
is  it  since  this  happened  ?  " 

"  Non  saprei,  signoria  ;  it  was  in  the  antiquest 
times,  certainly;  but  the  Romans  never  come  to 
our  Fair,  that  we  don't  have  blows  about  it,  and 
perhaps  a  stab  or  two.  Lordship  understands  ?  " 

I  was  quite  repaid  for  my  pilgrimage.  I  think 
I  understand  Italian  politics  better  for  hearing  Leo- 
poldo speak  of  the  Romans,  whose  great  dome  is  in 
full  sight  of  Tivoli,  as  a  foreign  nation.  But  what 
perennial  boyhood  the  whole  story  indicates  ! 

Storg's  sketch  of  the  morning's  ruin  was  so  suc- 
cessful that  I  seduced  him  into  a  new  expedition  to 
the  Ponte  Sant'  Antonio,  another  aqueduct  arch 
about  eight  miles  off.  This  was  for  the  afternoon, 
and  I  succeeded  the  more  easily,  as  we  were  to  go 
on  horseback.  So  I  told  Leopoldo  to  be  at  the  gate 
of  the  Villa  of  Hadrian,  at  three  o'clock,  with  three 
horses.  Leopoldo's  face,  when  I  said  three,  was 
worth  seeing  ;  for  the  poor  fellow  had  counted  on 


134  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

nothing  more  than  trotting  beside  our  horses  for 
sixteen  miles,  and  getting  half  a  dollar  in  the  even- 
ing. Between  doubt  and  hope,  his  face  seemed  to 
exude  a  kind  of  oil,  which  made  it  shine  externally, 
after  having  first  lubricated  all  the  muscles  in- 
wardly. 

"  With  three  horses,  Lordship  ?  " 

" Yes,  three" 

"  Lordship  is  very  sagacious.  With  three  horses 
they  go  much  quicker.  It  is  finished,  then,  and 
they  will  have  the  kindness  to  find  me  at  the  gate 
with  the  beasts,  at  three  o'clock  precisely." 

Leopoldo  and  I  had  compromised  upon  the  term 
"Lordship."  He  had  found  me  in  the  morning 
celebrating  due  rites  before  the  Sibyl's  Temple 
with  strange  incense  of  the  nicotian  herb,  and  had 
marked  me  for  his  prey.  At  the  very  high  tide  of 
sentiment,  when  the  traveller  lies  with  oyster-like 
openness  in  the  soft  ooze  of  reverie,  do  these  para- 
sitic crabs,  the  ciceroni,  insert  themselves  as  his 
inseparable  bosom  companions.  Unhappy  bivalve, 
lying  so  softly  between  thy  two  shells,  of  the  actual 
and  the  possible,  the  one  sustaining,  the  other 
widening  above  thee,  till,  oblivious  of  native  mud, 
thou  fanciest  thyself  a  proper  citizen  only  of  the 
illimitable  ocean  which  floods  thee,  —  there  is  no 
escape !  Vain  are  thy  poor  crustaceous  efforts  at 
self -isolation.  The  foe  henceforth  is  a  part  of  thy 
consciousness,  thy  landscape,  and  thyself,  happy 
only  if  that  irritation  breed  in  thee  the  pearl  of 
patience  and  of  voluntary  abstraction. 

"  Excellency  wants  a  guide,  very  experienced, 


ITALY  135 

who  has  conducted  with  great  mutual  satisfaction 
many  of  his  noble  compatriots." 

Puff,  puff,  and  an  attempt  at  looking  as  if  I  did 
not  see  him. 

"  Excellency  will  deign  to  look  at  my  book  of 
testimonials.  When  we  return,  Excellency  will 
add  his  own." 

Puff,  puff. 

"  Excellency  regards  the  cascade,  prceceps  Anio, 
as  the  good  Horatius  called  it." 

I  thought  of  the  dissolve  frigus  of  the  landlord 
in  Roderick  Random,  and  could  not  help  smiling. 
Leopoldo  saw  his  advantage. 

"  Excellency  will  find  Leopoldo,  when  he  shall 
choose  to  be  ready." 

"  But  I  will  positively  not  be  called  Excellency. 
I  am  not  an  ambassador,  nor  a  very  eminent  Chris- 
tian, and  the  phrase  annoys  me." 

"  To  be  sure,  Excell—  Lordship." 

"  I  am  an  American." 

"  Certainly,  an  American,  Lordship,"  —  as  if 
that  settled  the  matter  entirely.  If  I  had  told  him 
I  was  a  Caffre,  it  would  have  been  just  as  clear  to 
him.  He  surrendered  the  "  Excellency,"  but  on 
general  principles  of  human  nature,  I  suppose, 
would  not  come  a  step  lower  than  "Lordship." 
So  we  compromised  on  that.  —  P.  S.  It  is  won- 
derful how  soon  a  republican  ear  reconciles  itself 
with  syllables  of  this  description.  I  think  citizen 
would  find  greater  difficulties  in  the  way  of  its 
naturalization,  and  as  for  brother  —  ah !  well,  in  a 
Christian  sense,  certainly. 


136  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

Three  o'clock  found  us  at  the  Villa  of  Hadrian. 
We  had  explored  that  incomparable  ruin,  and  con- 
secrated it,  in  the  Homeric  and  Anglo-Saxon  man- 
ner, by  eating  and  drinking.  Some  of  us  sat  in 
the  shadow  of  one  of  the  great  walls,  fitter  for  a 
city  than  a  palace,  over  which  a  Nile  of  ivy,  gush- 
ing from  one  narrow  source,  spread  itself  in  widen- 
ing inundations.  A  happy  few  listened  to  stories 
of  Bagdad  from  Mrs.  Rich,  whose  silver  hair 
gleamed,  a  palpable  anachronism,  like  a  snowfall 
in  May,  over  that  ever-youthful  face,  where  the 
few  sadder  lines  seemed  but  the  signature  of  Age 
to  a  deed  of  quitclaim  and  release.  Dear  Tito, 
that  exemplary  traveller  who  never  lost  a  day, 
had  come  back  from  renewed  explorations,  con- 
vinced by  the  eloquent  custode  that  Serapeion  was 
the  name  of  an  officer  in  the  Praetorian  Guard.  I 
was  explaining,  in  addition,  that  Naumachia,  in 
the  Greek  tongue,  signified  a  place  artificially 
drained,  when  the  horses  were  announced. 

This  put  me  to  reflection.  I  felt,  perhaps,  a 
little  as  Mazeppa  must,  when  told  that  his  steed 
was  at  the  door.  For  several  years  I  had  not  been 
on  the  back  of  a  horse,  and  was  it  not  more  than 
likely  that  these  mountains  might  produce  a  yet 
more  refractory  breed  of  these  ferocious  animals 
than  common  ?  Who  could  tell  the  effect  of  graz- 
ing on  a  volcanic  soil  like  that  hereabout  ?  I  had 
vague  recollections  that  the  saddle  nullified  the 
laws  governing  the  impulsion  of  inert  bodies,  ex- 
acerbating  the  centrifugal  forces  into  a  virulent 
activity,  and  proportionably  narcotizing  the  cen- 


ITALY  137 

tripetal.  The  phrase  ratio  proportioned  to  the 
squares  of  the  distances  impressed  me  with  an  awe 
which  explained  to  me  how  the  laws  of  nature  had 
been  of  old  personified  and  worshipped.  Meditat- 
ing these  things,  I  walked  with  a  cheerful  aspect 
to  the  gate,  where  my  saddled  and  bridled  martyr- 
dom awaited  me. 

"  Eccomi  qua ! "  said  Leopoldo,  hilariously. 
"  Gentlemen  will  be  good  enough  to  select  from 
the  three  best  beasts  in  Tivoli." 

"Oh,  this  one  will  serve  me  as  well  as  any," 
said  I,  with  an  air  of  indifference,  much  as  I  have 
seen  a  gentleman  help  himself  inadvertently  to  the 
best  peach  in  the  dish.  I  am  not  more  selfish  than 
becomes  a  Christian  of  the  nineteenth  century,  but 
I  looked  on  this  as  a  clear  case  of  tabula  in  nau- 
fragio,  and  had  noticed  that  the  animal  in  question 
had  that  tremulous  droop  of  the  lower  lip  which 
indicates  senility,  and  the  abdication  of  the  wilder 
propensities.  Moreover,  he  was  the  only  one  pro- 
vided with  a  curb  bit,  or  rather  with  two  huge  iron 
levers  which  might  almost  have  served  Archimedes 
for  his  problem.  Our  saddles  were  flat  cushions 
covered  with  leather,  brought  by  years  of  friction 
to  the  highest  state  of  polish.  Instead  of  a  pom- 
mel, a  perpendicular  stake,  about  ten  inches  high, 
rose  in  front,  which,  in  case  of  a  stumble,  would 
save  one's  brains,  at  the  risk  of  certain  eviscera- 
tion. Behind,  a  glary  slope  invited  me  constantly 
to  slide  over  the  horse's  tail.  The  selfish  prudence 
of  my  choice  had  well-nigh  proved  the  death  of  me, 
for  this  poor  old  brute,  with  that  anxiety  to  oblige 


138  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

a  forestiero  which  characterizes  everybody  here, 
could  never  make  up  his  mind  which  of  his  four 
paces  (and  he  had  the  rudiments  of  four  —  walk, 
trot,  rack,  and  gallop)  would  be  most  agreeable  to 
me.  The  period  of  transition  is  always  unpleasant, 
and  it  was  all  transition.  He  treated  me  to  a 
hodge-podge  of  all  his  several  gaits  at  once.  Saint 
Vitus  was  the  only  patron  saint  I  could  think 
of.  My  head  jerked  one  way,  my  body  another, 
while  each  of  my  legs  became  a  pendulum  vibrating 
furiously,  one  always  forward  while  the  other  was 
back,  so  that  I  had  all  the  appearance  and  all  the 
labor  of  going  afoot,  and  at  the  same  time  was 
bumped  within  an  inch  of  my  life.  Waterton's 
alligator  was  nothing  to  it;  it  was  like  riding  a 
hard-trotting  armadillo  bare-backed.  There  is  a 
species  of  equitation  peculiar  to  our  native  land,  in 
which  a  rail  from  the  nearest  fence,  with  no  pre- 
liminary incantation  of  Horse  and  hattock!  is 
converted  into  a  steed,  and  this  alone  may  stand 
the  comparison.  Storg  in  the  mean  while  was  tri- 
umphantly taking  the  lead,  his  trousers  working 
up  very  pleasantly  above  his  knees,  an  insurrec- 
tionary movement  which  I  also  was  unable  to  sup- 
press in  my  own.  I  could  bear  it  no  longer. 

"  Le-e-o-o-p-o-o-o-l-l-l-d-d-o-o-p !  "  jolted  I. 

"  Command,  Lordship !  "  and  we  both  came  to 
a  stop. 

•  "  It  is  necessary  that  we  change  horses  immedi- 
ately, or  I  shall  be  jelly." 

"  Certainly,    Lordship ; "    and   I    soon   had   the 
pathetic  satisfaction  of  seeing  him  subjected  to  all 


ITALY  139 

the  excruciating  experiments  that  had  been  tried 
upon  myself.  Fiat  experimentum  in  corpore  vili, 
thought  his  extempore  lordship,  Christopher  Sly, 
to  himself. 

Meanwhile  all  the  other  accessories  of  our  ride 
were  delicious.  It  was  a  clear,  cool  day,  and  we 
soon  left  the  high  road  for  a  bridle-path  along  the 
side  of  the  mountain,  among  gigantic  olive-trees, 
said  to  be  five  hundred  years  old,  and  which  had 
certainly  employed  all  their  time  in  getting  into 
the  weirdest  and  wonderfullest  shapes.  Clearly 
in  this  green  commonwealth  there  was  no  heavy 
roller  of  public  opinion  to  flatten  all  character  to  a 
lawn-like  uniformity.  Everything  was  individual 
and  eccentric.  And  there  was  something  fearfully 
human,  too,  in  the  wildest  contortions.  It  was 
some  such  wood  that  gave  Dante  the  hint  of  his 
human  forest  in  the  seventh  circle,  and  I  should 
have  dreaded  to  break  a  twig,  lest  I  should  hear 
that  voice  complaining, 

"  Perchfe  mi  scerpi  ? 
Non  hai  tu  spirto  di  pietate  alcuno  ?  " 

Our  path  lay  along  a  kind  of  terrace,  and  at 
every  opening  we  had  glimpses  of  the  billowy  Cam- 
pagna,  with  the  great  dome  bulging  from  its  rim, 
while  on  our  right,  changing  ever  as  we  rode,  the 
Alban  mountain  showed  us  some  new  grace  of  that 
sweeping  outline  peculiar  to  volcanoes.  At  inter- 
vals the  substructions  of  Roman  villas  would  crop 
out  from  the  soil  like  masses  of  rock,  and  deserving 
to  rank  as  a  geological  formation  by  themselves. 
Indeed,  in  gazing  into  these  dark  caverns,  one  does 


140  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

not  think  of  man  more  than  at  Staffa.  Nature  has 
adopted  these  fragments  of  a  race  who  were  dear  to 
her.  She  has  not  suffered  these  bones  of  the  great 
Queen  to  lack  due  sepulchral  rites,  but  has  flung 
over  them  the  ceremonial  handfuls  of  earth,  and 
every  year  carefully  renews  the  garlands  of  memo- 
rial flowers.  Nay,  if  what  they  say  in  Rome  be 
true,  she  has  even  made  a  new  continent  of  the 
Colosseum,  and  given  it  a  flora  of  its  own. 

At  length,  descending  a  little,  we  passed  through 
farm-yards  and  cultivated  fields,  where,  from  Leo- 
poldo's  conversations  with  the  laborers,  we  dis- 
covered that  he  himself  did  not  know  the  way  for 
which  he  had  undertaken  to  be  guide.  However, 
we  presently  came  to  our  ruin,  and  very  noble  it 
was.  The  aqueduct  had  here  been  carried  across  a 
deep  gorge,  and  over  the  little  brook  which  wim- 
pled along  below  towered  an  arch,  as  a  bit  of 
Shakespeare  bestrides  the  exiguous  rill  of  a  dis- 
course which  it  was  intended  to  ornament.  The 
only  human  habitation  in  sight  was  a  little  casetta 
on  the  top  of  a  neighboring  hill.  What  else  of 
man's  work  could  be  seen  was  a  ruined  castle  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  and,  far  away  upon  the  horizon, 
the  eternal  dome.  A  valley  in  the  moon  could 
scarce  have  been  lonelier,  could  scarce  have  sug- 
gested more  strongly  the  feeling  of  preteriteness 
and  extinction.  The  stream  below  did  not  seem  so 
much  to  sing  as  to  murmur  sadly,  Conclusum  est ; 
periisti !  and  the  wind,  sighing  through  the  arch, 
answered,  Periisti!  Nor  was  the  silence  of  Monte 
Cavi  without  meaning.  That  cup,  once  full  of 


ITALY  141 


fiery  wine,  in  which  it  pledged  Vesuvius  and 
later  born,  was  brimmed  with  innocent  water  now. 
Adam  came  upon  the  earth  too  late  to  see  the  glare 
of  its  last  orgy,  lighting  the  eyes  of  saurians  in  the 
reedy  Campagna  below.  I  almost  fancied  I  could 
hear  a  voice  like  that  which  cried  to  the  Egyptian 
pilot,  Great  Pan  is  dead!  I  was  looking  into 
the  dreary  socket  where  once  glowed  the  eye  that 
saw  the  whole  earth  vassal.  Surely,  this  was  the 
world's  autumn,  and  I  could  hear  the  feet  of  Time 
rustling  through  the  wreck  of  races  and  dynasties, 
cheap  and  inconsiderable  as  fallen  leaves. 

But  a  guide  is  not  engaged  to  lead  one  into  the 
world  of  imagination.  He  is  as  deadly  to  senti- 
ment as  a  sniff  of  hartshorn.  His  position  is  a 
false  one,  like  that  of  the  critic,  who  is  supposed  to 
know  everything,  and  expends  himself  in  showing 
that  he  does  not.  If  you  should  ever  have  the  luck 
to  attend  a  concert  of  the  spheres,  under  the  pro- 
tection of  an  Italian  cicerone,  he  will  expect  you 
to  listen  to  him  rather  than  to  it.  He  will  say  : 
"  Ecco,  Signoria,  that  one  in  the  red  mantle  is 
Signor  Mars,  eh  !  what  a  noblest  basso  is  Signor 
Mars  !  but  nothing  (Lordship  understands  ?)  to 
what  Signor  Saturn  used  to  be,  (he  with  the  golden 
belt,  Signoria,')  only  his  voice  is  in  ruins  now,  — 
scarce  one  note  left  upon  another;  but  Lordship 
can  see  what  it  was  by  the  remains,  Roman  re- 
mains, Signoria,  Roman  remains,  the  work  of 
giants.  (Lordship  understands  ?)  They  make  no 
such  voices  now.  Certainly,  Signor  Jupiter  (with 
the  yellow  tunic,  there)  is  a  brave  artist  and  a 


142  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

most  sincere  tenor ;  but  since  the  time  of  the  Re- 
public "  (if  he  think  you  an  oscurante,  or  since  the 
French,  if  he  suspect  you  of  being  the  least  red^) 
"we  have  no  more  good  singing."  And  so  on. 

It  is  a  well-known  fact  to  all  persons  who  are  in 
the  habit  of  climbing  Jacob's-ladders,  that,  if  any 
one  speak  to  you  during  the  operation,  the  fabric 
collapses,  and  you  come  somewhat  uncomfortably 
to  the  ground.  One  can  be  hit  with  a  remark, 
when  he  is  beyond  the  reach  of  more  material  mis- 
siles. Leopoldo  saw  by  my  abstracted  manner  that 
I  was  getting  away  from  him,  and  I  was  the  only 
victim  he  had  left,  for  Storg  was  making  a  sketch 
below.  So  he  hastened  to  fetch  me  down  again. 

"  Nero  built  this  arch,  Lordship."  (He  did  n't, 
but  Nero  was  Leopoldo's  historical  scapegoat.) 
"  Lordship  sees  the  dome  ?  he  will  deign  to  look 
the  least  little  to  the  left  hand.  Lordship  has 
much  intelligence.  Well,  Nero  always  did  thus. 
His  works  always,  always,  had  Rome  in  view." 

He  had  already  shown  me  two  ruins,  which 
he  ascribed  equally  to  Nero,  and  which  could  only 
have  seen  Rome  by  looking  through  a  mountain. 
However,  such  trifles  are  nothing  to  an  accom- 
plished guide. 

I  remembered  his  quoting  Horace  in  the  morn- 
ing. 

"  Do  you  understand  Latin,  Leopoldo  ?  " 

"  I  did  a  little  once,  Lordship.  I  went  to  the 
Jesuits'  school  at  Tivoli.  But  what  use  of  Latin 
to  a  poverino  like  me  ?  " 

"  Were  you  intended  for  the  church  ?  Why  did 
you  leave  the  school  ?  " 


ITAU  143 

*s  Eh,  Lordship  !  "  and  one  of  those  shrugs  which 
might  mean  that  he  left  it  of  his  own  free  will,  or 
that  he  was  expelled  at  point  of  toe.  He  added 
some  contemptuous  phrase  about  the  priests. 

"  But,  Leopoldo,  you  are  a  good  Catholic  ?  " 

"Eh,  Lordship,  who  knows?  A  man  is  no 
blinder  for  being  poor,  —  nay,  hunger  sharpens 
the  eyesight  sometimes.  The  cardinals  (their 
Eminences  !)  tell  us  that  it  is  good  to  be  poor,  and 
that,  in  proportion  as  we  lack  on  earth,  it  shall  be 
made  up  to  us  in  Paradise.  Now,  if  the  cardinals 
(their  Eminences !)  believe  what  they  preach,  why 
do  they  want  to  ride  in  such  handsome  carriages  ?  " 

"  But  are  there  many  who  think  as  you  do  ?  " 

"  Everybody,  Lordship,  but  a  few  women  and 
fools.  What  imports  it  what  the  fools  think  ?  " 

An  immense  deal,  I  thought,  an  immense  deal ; 
for  of  what  material  is  public  opinion  manufac- 
tured ? 

"  Do  you  ever  go  to  church  ?  " 

"  Once  a  year,  Lordship,  at  Easter,  to  mass  and 
confession." 

"  Why  once  a  year  ?  " 

"  Because,  Lordship,  one  must  have  a  certificate 
from  the  priest.  One  might  be  sent  to  prison  else, 
and  one  had  rather  go  to  confession  than  to  jail. 
Eh,  Lordship,  it  is  a porcheria" 

It  is  proper  to  add,  that  in  what  Leopoldo  said 
of  the  priests  he  was  not  speaking  of  his  old  mas- 
ters, the  Jesuits.  One  never  hears  anything  in 
Italy  against  the  purity  of  their  lives,  or  their 
learning  and  ability,  though  much  against  their 


144          LEA  VES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

unscrupulousness.  Nor  will  any  one  who  has  ever 
enjoyed  the  gentle  and  dignified  hospitality  of  the 
Benedictines  be  ready  to  believe  any  evil  report  of 
them. 

By  this  time  Storg  had  finished  his  sketch,  and 
we  remounted  our  grazing  steeds.  They  were 
brisker  as  soon  as  their  noses  were  turned  home- 
ward, and  we  did  the  eight  miles  back  in  an  hour. 
The  setting  sun  streamed  through  and  among  the 
Michael  Angelesque  olive-trunks,  and,  through  the 
long  colonnade  of  the  bridle-path,  fired  the  scarlet 
waistcoats  and  bodices  of  homeward  villagers,  or 
was  sullenly  absorbed  in  the  long  black  cassock 
and  flapped  hat  of  a  priest,  who  courteously  sa- 
luted the  strangers.  Sometimes  a  mingled  flock 
of  sheep  and  goats  (as  if  they  had  walked  out  of 
one  of  Claude's  pictures)  followed  the  shepherd, 
who,  satyr-like,  in  goat-skin  breeches,  sang  such 
songs  as  were  acceptable  before  Tubal  Cain  struck 
out  the  laws  of  musical  time  from  his  anvil.  The 
peasant,  in  his  ragged  brown  cloak,  or  with  blue 
jacket  hanging  from  the  left  shoulder,  still  strides 
Romanly,  —  incedit  rex,  —  and  his  eyes  have  a 
placid  grandeur,  inherited  from  those  which  watched 
the  glittering  snake  of  the  Triumph,  as  it  undu- 
lated along  the  Via  Sacra.  By  his  side  moves 
with  equal  pace  his  woman-porter,  the  caryatid  of 
a  vast  entablature  of  household-stuff,  and  learning 
in  that  harsh  school  a  sinuous  poise  of  body  and  a 
security  of  step  beyond  the  highest  snatch  of  the 
posture-master. 

As   we   drew  near  Tivoli    the   earth   was   fast 


ITALY  145 

swinging  into  shadow.  The  darkening  Campagna, 
climbing  the  sides  of  the  nearer  Monticelli  in  a 
gray  belt  of  olive-spray,  rolled  on  towards  the  blue 
island  of  Soracte,  behind  which  we  lost  the  sun. 
Yes,  we  had  lost  the  sun  ;  but  in  the  wide  chimney 
of  the  largest  room  at  the  Sibilla  there  danced 
madly,  crackling  with  ilex  and  laurel,  a  bright 
ambassador  from  Sunland,  Monsieur  Le  Feu,  no 
pinchbeck  substitute  for  his  royal  master.  As  we 
drew  our  chairs  up,  after  the  dinner  due  to  Leo- 
poldo's  forethought,  "Behold,"  said  I,  "the  Resi- 
dent of  the  great  king  near  the  court  of  our  (this- 
day-created)  Hogan  Moganships." 

We  sat  looking  into  the  fire,  as  it  wavered  from 
shining  shape  to  shape  of  unearthliest  fantasy,  and 
both  of  us,  no  doubt,  making  out  old  faces  among 
the  embers,  for  we  both  said  together,  "  Let  us  talk 
of  old  times." 

•"To  the  small  hours,"  said  the  Edelmann ;  "and 
instead  of  blundering  off  to  Torneo  to  intrude  chat- 
teringly  upon  the  midnight  privacy  of  Apollo,  let 
us  promote  the  fire,  there,  to  the  rank  of  sun  by 
brevet,  and  have  a  kind  of  undress  rehearsal  of 
those  night  wanderings  of  his  here  upon  the  ample 
stage  of  the  hearth." 

So  we  went  through  the  whole  catalogue  of  Do 
you  remembers  ?  and  laughed  at  all  the  old  stories, 
so  dreary  to  an  outsider.  Then  we  grew  pensive, 
and  talked  of  the  empty  sockets  in  that  golden 
band  of  our  young  friendship,  —  of  S.,  with  Gre- 
cian front,  but  unsevere,  and  Saxon  M.,  to  whom 
laughter  was  as  natural  as  for  a  brook  to  ripple. 


146  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

But  Leopoldo  had  not  done  with  us.  We  were 
to  get  back  to  Rome  in  the  morning,  and  to  that 
end  must  make  a  treaty  with  the  company  which 
ran  the  Tivoli  diligence,  the  next  day  not  being  the 
regular  period  of  departure  for  that  prodigious 
structure.  We  had  given  Leopoldo  twice  his  fee, 
and,  setting  a  mean  value  upon  our  capacities  in 
proportion,  he  expected  to  bag  a  neat  percentage 
on  our  bargain.  Alas !  he  had  made  a  false  esti- 
mate of  the  Anglo-Norman  mind,  which,  capable  of 
generosity  as  a  compliment  to  itself,  will  stickle  for 
the  dust  in  the  balance  in  a  matter  of  business,  and 
would  blush  at  being  done  by  Mercury  himself. 

Accordingly,  at  about  nine  o'clock  there  came  a 
knock  at  the  door,  and,  answering  our  Favorisca  ! 
in  stalked  Leopoldo,  gravely  followed  by  the  two 
commissioners  of  the  company. 

"  Behold  me  returned,  Lordship,  and  these  men 
are  the  Vetturini" 

Why  is  it  that  men  who  have  to  do  with  horses 
are  the  same  all  over  Christendom  ?  Is  it  that 
they  acquire  equine  characteristics,  or  that  this  par- 
ticular mystery  is  magnetic  to  certain  sorts  of  men  ? 
Certainly  they  are  marked  unmistakably,  and  these 
two  worthies  would  have  looked  perfectly  natural 
in  Yorkshire  or  Vermont.  They  were  just  alike,  — 
fortemque  Gyan,  fortemque  Cloantkum, — and  you 
could  not  split  an  epithet  between  them.  Simul- 
taneously they  threw  back  their  large  overcoats, 
and  displayed  spheroidal  figures,  over  which  the 
strongly  pronounced  stripes  of  their  plaided  waist- 
coats ran  like  parallels  of  latitude  and  longitude 


1TALV  147 

over  a  globe.  Simultaneously  they  took  off  their 
hats  and  said,  "  Your  servant,  gentlemen."  In  Italy 
it  is  always  necessary  to  make  a  combinazione  be- 
forehand about  even  the  most  customary  matters, 
for  there  is  no  fixed  highest  price  for  anything. 
For  a  minute  or  two  we  stood  reckoning  each 
other's  forces.  Then  I  opened  the  first  trench 
with  the  usual,  "  How  much  do  you  wish  for  carry- 
ing us  to  Rome  at  half -past  seven  to-morrow  morn- 
ing?" 

The  enemy  glanced  one  at  the  other,  and  the 
result  of  this  ocular  witenagemot  was  that  one  said, 
"  Four  scudi,  gentlemen." 

The  Edelmann  Storg  took  his  cigar  from  his 
mouth  in  order  to  whistle,  and  made  a  rather  in- 
decorous allusion  to  four  gentlemen  in  the  diplo- 
matic service  of  his  Majesty,  the  Prince  of  the 
Powers  of  the  Air. 

"  Whe-ew !  quattro  diavoli  !  "  said  he. 

"  Macche ! "  exclaimed  I,  attempting  a  flank- 
movement,  "  I  had  rather  go  on  foot !  "  and  threw 
as  much  horror  into  my  face  as  if  a  proposition 
had  been  made  to  me  to  commit  robbery,  murder, 
and  arson  all  together. 

"  For  less  than  three  scudi  and  a  half  the  dili- 
gence parts  not  from  Tivoli  at  an  extraordinary 
hour,"  said  the  stout  man,  with  an  imperturbable 
gravity,  intended  to  mask  his  retreat,  and  to  make 
it  seem  that  he  was  making  the  same  proposal  as 
at  first. 

Storg  saw  that  they  wavered,  and  opened  upon 
them  with  his  flying  artillery  of  sarcasm. 


148  LEA  VES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

"Do  you  take  us  for  Inglesi?  We  are  very 
well  here,  and  will  stay  at  the  Sibilla,"  he  sniffed 
scornfully. 

"  How  much  will  Lordship  give  ?  "  (This  was 
showing  the  white  feather.) 

"  Fifteen  pauls,"  (a  scudo  and  a  half,)  "  buona- 
mano  included." 

"  It  is  impossible,  gentlemen ;  for  less  than  two 
scudi  and  a  half  the  diligence  parts  not  from 
Tivoli  at  an  extraordinary  hour." 

"  Fifteen  pauls." 

"Will  Lordship  give  two  scudi?"  (with  a 
slight  flavor  of  mendicancy.) 

"  Fifteen  pauls,"  (growing  firm  as  we  saw  them 
waver.) 

"Then,  gentlemen,  it  is  all  over;  it  is  impos- 
sible, gentlemen." 

"  Very  good ;  a  pleasant  evening  to  you !  "  and 
they  bowed  themselves  out. 

As  soon  as  the  door  closed  behind  them,  Leo- 
poldo,  who  had  looked  on  in  more  and  more  anx- 
ious silence  as  the  chance  of  plunder  was  whittled 
slimmer  and  slimmer  by  the  sharp  edges  of  the 
parley,  saw  instantly  that  it  was  for  his  interest 
to  turn  state's  evidence  against  his  accomplices. 

"  They  will  be  back  in  a  moment,"  he  said  know- 
ingly, as  if  he  had  been  of  our  side  all  along. 

"  Of  course ;  we  are  aware  of  that."  —  It  is 
always  prudent  to  be  aware  of  everything  in  trav- 
elling. 

And,  sure  enough,  in  five  minutes  re-enter  the 
stout  men,  as  gravely  as  if  everything  had  been 


ITALY  149 

thoroughly  settled,  and  ask  respectfully  at  what 
hour  we  would  have  the  diligence. 

This  will  serve  as  a  specimen  of  Italian  bargain- 
making.  They  do  not  feel  happy  if  they  get  their 
first  price.  So  easy  a  victory  makes  them  sorry 
they  had  not  asked  twice  as  much,  and,  besides, 
they  love  the  excitement  of  the  contest.  I  have 
seen  as  much  debate  over  a  little  earthen  pot  (value 
two  cents)  on  the  Ponte  Vecchio,  in  Florence,  as 
would  have  served  for  an  operation  of  millions  in 
the  funds,  the  demand  and  the  offer  alternating  so 
rapidly  that  the  litigants  might  be  supposed  to  be 
playing  the  ancient  game  of  morra.  It  is  a  part 
of  the  universal  fondness  for  gaming,  and  lotteries. 
An  English  gentleman  once  asked  his  Italian 
courier  how  large  a  percentage  he  made  on  all  of 
his  employer's  money  which  passed  through  his 
hands.  "About  five  per  cent;  sometimes  more, 
sometimes  less,"  was  the  answer.  "  Well,  I  will 
add  that  to  your  salary,  in  order  that  I  may  be  rid 
of  this  uncomfortable  feeling  of  being  cheated." 
The  courier  mused  a  moment,  and  said,  "  But  no, 
sir,  I  should  not  be  happy ;  then  it  would  not  be 
sometimes  more,  sometimes  less,  and  I  should  miss 
the  excitement  of  the  game." 

22df.  —  This  morning  the  diligence  was  at  the 
door  punctually,  and,  taking  our  seats  in  the  coupe, 
we  bade  farewell  to  La  Sibilla.  But  first  we  ran 
back  for  a  parting  glimpse  at  the  waterfall.  These 
last  looks,  like  lovers'  last  kisses,  are  nouns  of  mul- 
titude, and  presently  the  povero  stalliere,  signori, 
waited  upon  us,  cap  in  hand,  telling  us  that  the 


150  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

vetturino  was  impatient,  and  begging  for  drink- 
money  in  the  same  breath.  Leopoldo  hovered 
longingly  afar,  for  these  vultures  respect  times 
and  seasons,  and  while  one  is  fleshing  his  beak 
upon  the  foreign  prey,  the  others  forbear.  The 
passengers  in  the  diligence  were  not  very  lively. 
The  Romans  are  a  grave  people,  and  more  so  than 
ever  since  '49.  Of  course,  there  was  one  priest 
among  them  There  always  is ;  for  the  mantis 
religiosa  is  as  inevitable  to  these  public  convey- 
ances as  the  curculio  is  to  the  plum,  and  one  could 
almost  fancy  that  they  were  bred  in  the  same  way, 
—  that  the  egg  was  inserted  when  the  vehicle  was 
green,  became  developed  as  it  ripened,  and  never 
left  it  till  it  dropped  withered  from  the  pole. 
There  was  nothing  noticeable  on  the  road  to  Rome, 
except  the  strings  of  pack-horses  and  mules  which 
we  met  returning  with  empty  lime-sacks  to  Tivoli, 
whence  comes  the  supply  of  Rome.  A  railroad 
was  proposed,  but  the  government  would  not  allow 
it,  because  it  would  interfere  with  this  carrying- 
trade,  and  wisely  granted  instead  a  charter  for 
a  road  to  Frascati,  where  there  was  no  business 
whatever  to  be  interfered  with.  About  a  mile  of 
this  is  built  in  a  style  worthy  of  ancient  Rome; 
and  it  is  possible  that  eventually  another  mile 
may  be  accomplished,  for  some  half-dozen  labor- 
ers are  at  work  upon  it  with  wheelbarrows,  in  the 
leisurely  Roman  fashion.  If  it  be  ever  finished,  it 
will  have  nothing  to  carry  but  the  conviction  of  its 
own  uselessness.  A  railroad  has  been  proposed  to 
Civita  Vecchia;  but  that  is  out  of  the  question, 


ITALY  151 

because  it  would  be  profitable.  On  the  whole,  one 
does  not  regret  the  failure  of  these  schemes.  One 
would  not  approach  the  solitary  emotion  of  a  life- 
time, such  as  is  the  first  sight  of  Rome,  at  the  rate 
of  forty  miles  an  hour.  It  is  better,  after  pain- 
fully crawling  up  one  of  those  long  paved  hills,  to 
have  the  postilion  turn  in  his  saddle,  and,  pointing 
with  his  whip,  (without  looking,  for  he  knows  in- 
stinctively where  it  is,)  say,  Ecco  San  Pletro ! 
Then  you  look  tremblingly,  and  see  it  hovering 
visionary  on  the  horizon's  verge,  and  in  a  moment 
you  are  rattling  and  rumbling  and  wallowing  down 
into  the  valley,  and  it  is  gone.  So  you  play  hide- 
and-seek  with  it  all  the  rest  of  the  way,  and  have 
time  to  converse  with  your  sensations.  You  fancy 
you  have  got  used  to  it  at  last ;  but  from  the  next 
hill-top,  lo,  there  it  looms  again,  a  new  wonder, 
and  you  do  not  feel  sure  that  it  will  keep  its  tryst 
till  you  find  yourself  under  its  shadow.  The  Dome 
is  to  the  Eternal  City  what  Vesuvius  is  to  Naples ; 
only  a  greater  wonder,  for  Michael  Angelo  hung 
it  there.  The  traveller  climbs  it  as  he  would  a 
mountain,  and  finds  the  dwellings  of  men  high  up 
on  its  sacred  cliffs.  It  has  its  annual  eruption,  too, 
at  Easter,  when  the  fire  trickles  and  palpitates  down 
its  mighty  shoulders,  seen  from  far-off  Tivoli.  — 
No,  the  locomotive  is  less  impertinent  at  Portici, 
hailing  the  imprisoned  Titan  there  with  a  kindred 
shriek.  Let  it  not  vex  the  solemn  Roman  ghosts, 
or  the  nobly  desolate  Campagna,  with  whose  soli- 
tudes the  shattered  vertebrae  of  the  aqueducts  are 
in  truer  sympathy. 


152          LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

24th.  —  To-day  our  journey  to  Subiaco  properly 
begins.  The  jocund  morning  had  called  the  beg- 
gars to  their  street-corners,  and  the  women  to  the 
windows  ;  the  players  of  morra  (a  game  probably 
as  old  as  the  invention  of  fingers),  of  chuck-far- 
thing, and  of  bowls,  had  cheerfully  begun  the  labors 
of  the  day ;  the  plaintive  cries  of  the  chair-seaters, 
frog-venders,  and  certain  other  peripatetic  mer- 
chants, the  meaning  of  whose  vocal  advertisements 
I  could  never  penetrate,  quaver  at  regular  inter- 
vals, now  near  and  now  far  away ;  a  solitary  Jew 
with  a  sack  over  his  shoulder,  and  who  never  is 
seen  to  stop,  slouches  along,  every  now  and  then 
croaking  a  penitential  Cenci  !  as  if  he  were  some- 
how the  embodied  expiation  (by  some  post-Ovidian 
metamorphosis)  of  that  darkest  Roman  tragedy ; 
women  are  bargaining  for  lettuce  and  endive  ;  the 
slimy  Triton  in  the  Piazza  Barberina  spatters  him- 
self with  vanishing  diamonds  ;  a  peasant  leads  an 
ass  on  which  sits  the  mother  with  the  babe  in  her 
arms,  —  a  living  flight  into  Egypt;  in  short,  the 
beautiful  spring  day  had  awakened  all  of  Rome 
that  can  awaken  yet,  (for  the  ideal  Rome  waits  for 
another  morning,)  when  we  rattled  along  in  our  car- 
rettella  on  the  way  to  Palestrina.  A  carrettella  is 
to  the  perfected  vehicle,  as  the  coracle  to  the  steam- 
ship ;  it  is  the  first  crude  conception  of  a  wheeled 
carriage.  Doubtless  the  inventor  of  it  was  a  pro- 
digious genius  in  his  day,  and  rode  proudly  in 
it,  envied  by  the  more  fortunate  pedestrian,  and 
cushioned  by  his  own  inflated  imagination.  If  the 
chariot  of  Achilles  were  like  it,  then  was  Hector 


St.  Peter's 


ITALY  153 

happier  at  the  tail  than  the  son  of  Thetis  on  the 
box.  It  is  an  oblong  basket  upon  two  wheels,  with 
a  single  seat  rising  in  the  middle.  We  had  not 
jarred  over  a  hundred  yards  of  the  Quattro  Fon- 
tane,  before  we  discovered  that  no  elastic  propug- 
naculum  had  been  interposed  between  the  body 
and  the  axle,  so  that  we  sat,  as  it  were,  on  paving- 
stones,  mitigated  only  by  so  much  as  well-seasoned 
ilex  is  less  flinty-hearted  than  tufo  or  breccia.  If 
there  were  any  truth  in  the  theory  of  develop- 
ments, I  am  certain  that  we  should  have  been  fur- 
nished with  a  pair  of  rudimentary  elliptical  springs, 
at  least,  before  half  our  day's  journey  was  over. 
However,  as  one  of  those  happy  illustrations  of 
ancient  manners,  which  one  meets  with  so  often 
here,  it  was  instructive ;  for  I  now  clearly  under- 
stand that  it  was  not  merely  by  reason  of  pomp 
that  Hadrian  used  to  be  three  days  in  getting  to 
his  villa,  only  twelve  miles  off.  In  spite  of  the 
author  of  "Vestiges,"  Nature,  driven  to  extrem- 
ities, can  develop  no  more  easy  cushion  than  a  blis- 
ter, and  no  doubt  treated  an  ancient  emperor  and 
a  modern  republican  with  severe  impartiality. 

It  was  difficult  to  talk  without  biting  one's 
tongue ;  but  as  soon  as  we  had  got  fairly  beyond 
the  gate,  and  out  of  sight  of  the  last  red-legged 
French  soldier,  and  tightly-buttoned  doganiere,  our 
driver  became  loquacious. 

"I  am  a  good  Catholic,  —  better  than  most," 
said  he,  suddenly. 

"  What  do  you  mean  by  that  ?  " 

"  Eh !  they  say  Saint  Peter  wrought  miracles, 


154         LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

and  there  are  enough  who  don't  believe  it ;  but 
I  do.  There 's  the  Barberini  Palace,  —  behold  one 
miracle  of  Saint  Peter  !  There  's  the  Farnese,  — 
behold  another !  There  's  the  Borghese,  — behold 
a  third  !  But  there  's  no  end  of  them.  No  saint, 
nor  all  the  saints  put  together,  ever  worked  so 
many  wonders  as  he  ;  and  then,  per  Bacco  !  he  is 
the  uncle  of  so  many  folks,  —  why,  that 's  a  mira- 
cle in  itself,  and  of  the  greatest !  " 

Presently  he  added :  '*  Do  you  know  how  we 
shall  treat  the  priests  when  we  make  our  next 
revolution?  We  shall  treat  them  as  they  treat 
us,  and  that  is  after  the  fashion  of  the  buffalo. 
For  the  buffalo  is  not  content  with  getting  a  man 
down,  but  after  that  he  gores  him  and  thrusts  him, 
always,  always,  as  if  he  wished  to  cram  him  to  the 
centre  of  the  earth.  Ah,  if  I  were  only  keeper 
of  hell-gate!  Not  a  rascal  of  them  all  should 
ever  get  out  into  purgatory  while  I  stood  at  the 
door!" 

We  remonstrated  a  little,  but  it  only  exasperated 
him  the  more. 

"  Blood  of  Judas !  they  will  eat  nothing  else 
than  gold,  when  a  poor  fellow's  belly  is  as  empty 
as  San  Lorenzo  yonder.  They  '11  have  enough  of 
it  one  of  these  days  —  but  melted  !  How  do  you 
think  they  will  like  it  for  soup  ?  " 

Perhaps,  if  our  vehicle  had  been  blessed  with 
springs,  our  vetturino  would  have  been  more  placa- 
ble. I  confess  a  growing  moroseness  in  myself, 
and  a  wandering  speculation  or  two  as  to  the  possi- 
ble fate  of  the  builder  of  our  chariot  in  the  next 


ITALY  155 

world.  But  I  am  more  and  more  persuaded  every 
day,  that,  as  far  as  the  popular  mind  is  concerned, 
Romanism  is  a  dead  thing  in  Italy.  It  survives 
only  because  there  is  nothing  else  to  replace  it  with, 
for  men  must  wear  their  old  habits  (however 
threadbare  and  out  at  elbows)  till  they  get  bet- 
ter. It  is  literally  a  superstition,  —  a  something 
left  to  stand  over  till  the  great  commercial  spirit 
of  the  nineteenth  century  balances  his  accounts 
again,  and  then  it  will  be  banished  to  the  limbo 
of  profit  and  loss.  The  Papacy  lies  dead  in  the 
Vatican,  but  the  secret  is  kept  for  the  present,  and 
government  is  carried  on  in  its  name.  After  the 
fact  gets  abroad,  perhaps  its  ghost  will  terrify  men 
a  little  while  longer,  but  only  while  they  are  in  the 
dark,  though  the  ghost  of  a  creed  is  a  hard  thing 
to  give  a  mortal  wound  to,  and  may  be  laid,  after 
all,  only  in  a  Red  Sea  of  blood. 

So  we  rattled  along  till  we  came  to  a  large  al- 
bergo  just  below  the  village  of  Colonna.  While 
our  horse  was  taking  his  rinfresco,  we  climbed  up 
to  it,  and  found  it  desolate  enough,  —  the  houses 
never  rebuilt  since  Consul  Rienzi  sacked  it  five 
hundred  years  ago.  It  was  a  kind  of  gray  incrus- 
tation on  the  top  of  the  hill,  chiefly  inhabited  by 
pigs,  chickens,  and  an  old  woman  with  a  distaff, 
who  looked  as  sacked  and  ruinous  as  everything 
around  her.  There  she  sat  in  the  sun,  a  dreary, 
doting  Clotho,  who  had  outlived  her  sisters,  and 
span  endless  destinies  which  none  was  left  to  cut 
at  the  appointed  time.  Of  course  she  paused  from 
her  work  a  moment,  and  held  out  a  skinny  hand, 


156  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

with  the  usual,  "  Noblest  gentlemen,  give  me  some- 
thing for  charity."  We  gave  her  enough  to  pay 
Charon's  ferriage  across  to  her  sisters,  and  de- 
parted hastily,  for  there  was  something  uncanny 
about  the  place.  In  this  climate  even  the  finger- 
marks of  Bum  herself  are  indelible,  and  the  walls 
were  still  blackened  with  Rienzi's  fires. 

As  we  waited  for  our  carrettella,  I  saw  four  or 
five  of  the  lowest-looking  peasants  come  up  and 
read  the  handbill  of  a  tombola  (a  kind  of  lottery) 
which  was  stuck  up  beside  the  inn-door.  One  of 
them  read  it  aloud  for  our  benefit,  and  with  re- 
markable propriety  of  accent  and  emphasis.  This 
benefit  of  clergy,  however,  is  of  no  great  conse- 
quence where  there  is  nothing  to  read.  In  Rome, 
this  morning,  the  walls  were  spattered  with  pla- 
cards condemning  the  works  of  George  Sand,  Eu- 
gene Sue,  Gioberti,  and  others.  But  in  Rome  one 
may  contrive  to  read  any  book  he  likes ;  and  I 
know  Italians  who  are  familiar  with  Swedenborg, 
and  even  Strauss. 

Our  stay  at  the  albergo  was  illustrated  by  one 
other  event,  —  a  nightingale  singing  in  a  full-blos- 
somed elder-bush  on  the  edge  of  a  brook  just 
across  the  road.  So  liquid  were  the  notes,  and  so 
full  of  spring,  that  the  twig  he  tilted  on  seemed  a 
conductor  through  which  the  mingled  magnetism 
of  brook  and  blossom  flowed  into  him  and  were 
precipitated  in  music.  Nature  understands  thor- 
oughly the  value  of  contrasts,  and  accordingly  a 
donkey  from  a  shed  hard  by,  hitched  and  hesitated 
and  agonized  through  his  bray,  so  that  we  might 


ITALY  157 

be  conscious  at  once  of  the  positive  and  negative 
poles  of  song.  It  was  pleasant  to  see  with  what 
undoubting  enthusiasm  he  went  through  his  solo, 
and  vindicated  Providence  from  the  imputation  of 
weakness  in  making  such  trifles  as  the  nightingale 
yonder.  "  Give  ear,  O  heaven  and  earth !  "  he 
seemed  to  say,  "  nor  dream  that  good,  sound  com- 
mon-sense is  extinct  or  out  of  fashion  so  long  as  / 
live."  I  suppose  Nature  made  the  donkey  half  ab- 
stractedly, while  she  was  feeling  her  way  up  to  her 
ideal  in  the  horse,  and  that  his  bray  is  in  like  man- 
ner an  experimental  sketch  for  the  neigh  of  her 
finished  animal. 

"We  drove  on  to  Palestrina,  passing  for  some 
distance  over  an  old  Roman  road,  as  carriageable 
as  when  it  was  built.  Palestrina  occupies  the  place 
of  the  once  famous  Temple  of  Fortune,  whose 
ruins  are  perhaps  a  fitter  monument  of  the  fickle 
goddess  than  ever  the  perfect  fane  was. 

Come  hither,  weary  ghosts  that  wail 
O'er  buried  Nimroud's  carven  walls, 

And  ye  whose  nightly  footsteps  frail 
From  the  dread  hush  of  Memphian  halls 
Lead  forth  the  whispering  funerals  I 

Come  hither,  shade  of  ancient  pain 
That,  muffled  sitting,  hear'st  the  foam 

To  death-deaf  Carthage  shout  in  vain, 
And  thou  that  in  the  Sibyl's  tome 
Tear-stain'st  the  never  after  Rome ! 

Come,  Marius,  Wolsey,  all  ye  great 

On  whom  proud  Fortune  stamped  her  heel, 

And  see  herself  the  sport  of  Fate, 
Herself  discrowned  and  made  to  feel 
The  treason  of  her  slippery  wheel ! 


158  LEA  VES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

One  climbs  through  a  great  part  of  the  town  by 
stone  steps,  passing  fragments  of  Pelasgic  wall, 
(for  history,  like  geology,  may  be  studied  here  in 
successive  rocky  strata,*)  and  at  length  reaches  the 
inn,  called  the  Cappellaro,  the  sign  of  which  is  a 
great  tin  cardinal's  hat,  swinging  from  a  small 
building  on  the  other  side  of  the  street,  so  that  a 
better  view  of  it  may  be  had  from  the  hostelry  it- 
self. The  landlady,  a  stout  woman  of  about  sixty 
years,  welcomed  us  heartily,  and  burst  forth  into 
an  eloquent  eulogy  on  some  fresh  sea-fish  which 
she  had  just  received  from  Rome.  She  promised 
everything  for  dinner,  leaving  us  to  choose  ;  but 
as  a  skilful  juggler  flitters  the  cards  before  you, 
and,  while  he  seems  to  offer  ah1,  forces  upon  you 
the  one  he  wishes,  so  we  found  that  whenever  we 
undertook  to  select  from  her  voluble  bill  of  fare, 
we  had  in  some  unaccountable  manner  always  or- 
dered sea-fish.  Therefore,  after  a  few  vain  efforts, 
we  contented  ourselves,  and,  while  our  dinner  was 
cooking,  climbed  up  to  the  top  of  the  town.  Here 
stands  the  deserted  Palazzo  Barberini,  in  which  is 
a  fine  Roman  mosaic  pavement.  It  was  a  dreary 
old  place.  On  the  ceilings  of  some  of  the  apart- 
ments were  fading  out  the  sprawling  apotheoses  of 
heroes  of  the  family,  (themselves  long  ago  faded 
utterly,)  who  probably  went  through  a  somewhat 
different  ceremony  after  their  deaths  from  that 
represented  here.  One  of  the  rooms  on  the 
ground-floor  was  still  occupied,  and  from  its  huge 
grated  windows  there  sweUed  and  subsided  at  in- 
tervals a  confused  turmoil  of  voices,  some  talking, 


ITALY  159 

some  singing,  some  swearing,  and  some  lamenting, 
as  if  a  page  of  Dante's  Inferno  had  become  sud- 
denly alive  under  one's  eye.  This  was  the  prison, 
and  in  front  of  each  window  a  large  stone  block 
allowed  tete-a-tete  discourses  between  the  prisoners 
and  their  friends  outside  as  well  as  the  passing  in 
of  food.  English  jails  were  like  this  in  Queen 
Elizabeth's  time  and  later.  In  Heywood's  "  Wo- 
man killed  with  Kindness,"  Acton  says  of  his 
enemy  Mountford,  in  prison  for  debt,  — 

"  shall  we  hear 

The  music  of  his  voice  cry  from  the  grate 
Meat,  far  the  Lord's  sake  ?  " 

Behind  the  palace  rises  a  steep,  rocky  hill,  with  a 
continuation  of  ruined  castle,  the  innocent  fastness 
now  of  rooks  and  swallows.  We  walked  down  to  a 
kind  of  terrace,  and  watched  the  Alban  Mount 
(which  saw  the  sunset  for  us  by  proxy)  till  the 
bloom  trembled  nearer  and  nearer  to  its  summit, 
then  went  wholly  out,  we  could  not  say  when,  and 
day  was  dead.  Simultaneously  we  thought  of  din- 
ing, and  clattered  hastily  down  to  the  Cappellaro. 
We  had  to  wait  yet  half  an  hour  for  dinner,  and 
from  where  I  sat  I  could  see  through  the  door  of 
the  dining-room  a  kind  of  large  hall  into  which  a 
door  from  the  kitchen  also  opened.  Presently  I  saw 
the  landlady  come  out  with  a  little  hanging  lamp 
in  her  hand,  and  seat  herself  amply  before  a  row  of 
baskets  ranged  upside-down  along  the  wall.  She 
carefully  lifted  the  edge  of  one  of  these,  and,  after 
she  had  groped  in  it  a  moment,  I  heard  that  hoarse 
choking  scream  peculiar  to  fowls  when  seized  by 


160  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

the  leg  in  the  dark,  as  if  their  throats  were  in  their 
tibiae  after  sunset.  She  took  out  a  fine  young  cock 
and  set  him  upon  his  feet  before  her,  stupid  with 
sleep,  and  blinking  helplessly  at  the  lamp,  which 
he  perhaps  took  for  a  sun  in  reduced  circum- 
stances, doubtful  whether  to  crow  or  cackle.  She 
looked  at  him  admiringly,  felt  of  him,  sighed,  gazed 
sadly  at  his  coral  crest,  and  put  him  back  again. 
This  ceremony  she  repeated  with  five  or  six  of  the 
baskets,  and  then  went  back  into  the  kitchen.  I 
thought  of  Thessalian  hags  and  Arabian  enchan- 
tresses, and  wondered  if  these  were  transformed 
travellers,  —  for  travellers  go  through  queer  trans- 
formations sometimes.  Should  Storg  and  I  be 
crowing  and  scratching  to-morrow  morning,  instead 
of  going  to  Subiaco  ?  Should  we  be  Plato's  men, 
with  the  feathers,  instead  of  without  them?  I 
would  probe  this  mystery.  So,  when  the  good 
woman  came  in  to  lay  the  table,  I  asked  what  she 
had  been  doing  with  the  fowls. 

"  I  thought  to  kill  one  for  the  gentlemen's  soup ; 
but  they  were  so  beautiful  my  heart  failed  me. 
Still,  if  the  gentlemen  wish  it  —  only  I  thought  two 
pigeons  would  be  more  delicate." 

Of  course  we  declined  to  be  accessory  to  such  a 
murder,  and  she  went  off  delighted,  returning  in  a 
few  minutes  with  our  dinner.  First  we  had  soup, 
then  a  roasted  kid,  then  boiled  pigeons,  (of  which 
the  soup  had  been  made,)  and  last  the  pesci  di 
mare,  which  were  not  quite  so  great  a  novelty  to  us 
as  to  our  good  hostess.  However,  hospitality,  like 
so  many  other  things,  is  reciprocal,  and  the  guest 


ITALY  161 

must  bring  his  half,  or  it  is  naught.  The  pros- 
perity of  a  dinner  lies  in  the  heart  of  him  that  eats 
it,  and  an  appetite  twelve  miles  long  enabled  us  to 
do  as  great  justice  to  the  fish  as  if  we  were  crowd- 
ing all  Lent  into  one  meal.  The  landlady  came 
and  sat  by  us ;  a  large  and  serious  cat,  winding  her 
great  tail  round  her,  settled  herself  comfortably 
on  the  table,  licking  her  paws  now  and  then,  with 
a  poor  relation's  look  at  the  fish ;  a  small  dog 
sprang  into  an  empty  chair,  and  a  large  one,  with 
very  confidential  manners,  would  go  from  one  to 
the  other  of  us,  laying  his  paw  upon  our  arms  as  if 
he  had  an  important  secret  to  communicate,  and 
alternately  pricking  and  drooping  his  ears  in  hope 
or  despondency.  The  albergatrice  forthwith  began 
to  tell  us  her  story,  —  how  she  was  a  widow,  how 
she  had  borne  thirteen  children,  twelve  still  living, 
and  how  she  received  a  pension  of  sixty  scudi  a 
year,  under  the  old  Roman  law,  for  her  meritorious- 
ness  in  this  respect.  The  portrait  of  the  son  she 
had  lost  hung  over  the  chimney-place,  and,  pointing 
to  it,  she  burst  forth  into  the  following  droll  thren- 
ody. The  remarks  in  parenthesis  were  screamed 
through  the  kitchen-door,  which  stood  ajar,  or  ad- 
dressed personally  to  us. 

"  O  my  son,  my  son !  the  doctors  killed  him,  just 
as  truly  as  if  they  had  poisoned  him  !  O  how 
beautiful  he  was !  beautiful !  beautiful  1 !  BEAUTI- 
FUL ! ! !  (Are  not  those  fish  done  yet  ?)  Look, 
that  is  his  likeness,  —  but  he  was  handsomer.  He 
was  as  big  as  that"  (extending  her  arms),  —  "big 
breast,  big  shoulders,  big  sides,  big  legs !  (Eat 


162  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

'em,  eat  'em,  they  won't  hurt  you,  fresh  sea-fish, 
fresh !  fresh  !  !  FRESH  !  ! !)  I  told  them  the  doc- 
tors had  murdered  him,  when  they  carried  him  with 
torches !  He  had  been  hunting,  and  brought  home 
some  rabbits,  I  remember,  for  he  was  not  one  that 
ever  came  empty-handed,  and  got  the  fever,  and 
you  treated  him  for  consumption,  and  killed  him ! 
(Shall  I  come  out  there,  or  will  you  bring  some 
more  fish  ?)  "  So  she  went  on,  talking  to  herself, 
to  us,  to  the  little  serva  in  the  kitchen,  and  to 
the  medical  profession  in  general,  repeating  every 
epithet  three  times,  with  increasing  emphasis,  till 
her  voice  rose  to  a  scream,  and  contriving  to  mix 
up  her  living  children  with  her  dead  one,  the  fish, 
the  doctors,  the  serva,  and  the  rabbits,  till  it  was 
hard  to  say  whether  it  was  the  fish  that  had  large 
legs,  whether  the  doctors  had  killed  them,  or  the 
serva  had  killed  the  doctors,  and  whether  the  bello  ! 
bello  !  1  bello  !  I !  referred  to  her  son  or  a  particu- 
larly fine  rabbit. 

25^A.  —  Having  engaged  our  guide  and  horses 
the  night  before,  we  set  out  betimes  this  morning 
for  Olevano.  From  Palestrina  to  Cavi  the  road 
winds  along  a  narrow  valley,  following  the  course 
of  a  stream  which  rustles  rather  than  roars  below. 
Large  chestnut-trees  lean  every  way  on  the  steep 
sides  of  the  hills  above  us,  and  at  every  opening 
we  could  see  great  stretches  of  Campagua  rolling 
away  and  away  toward  the  bases  of  purple  moun- 
tains streaked  with  snow.  The  sides  of  the  road 
were  drifted  with  heaps  of  wild  hawthorn  and 
honeysuckle  in  full  bloom,  and  bubbling  with  in- 


ITALY  163 

numerable  nightingales  that  sang  unseen.  Over- 
head the  sunny  sky  tinkled  with  larks,  as  if  the 
frost  in  the  air  were  breaking  up  and  whirling 
away  on  the  swollen  currents  of  spring. 

Before  long  we  overtook  a  little  old  man  hob- 
bling toward  Cavi,  with  a  bag  upon  his  back. 
This  was  the  mail !  Happy  country,  which  Hurry 
and  Worry  have  not  yet  subjugated !  Then  we 
clattered  up  and  down  the  narrow  paved  streets  of 
Cavi,  through  the  market-place,  full  of  men  dressed 
all  alike  in  blue  jackets,  blue  breeches,  and  white 
stockings,  who  do  not  stare  at  the  strangers,  and  so 
out  at  the  farther  gate.  Now  oftener  and  oftener 
we  meet  groups  of  peasants  in  gayest  dresses,  rag- 
ged pilgrims  with  staff  and  scallop,  singing  (horri- 
bly) ;  then  processions  with  bag-pipes  and  pipes 
in  front,  droning  and  squealing  (horribly)  ;  then 
strings  of  two-wheeled  carts,  eight  or  nine  in  each, 
and  in  the  first  the  priest,  book  in  hand,  setting 
the  stave,  and  all  singing  (horribly).  This  must 
be  inquired  into.  Gigantic  guide,  who,  splendid 
with  blue  sash  and  silver  knee-buckles,  has  con- 
trived, by  incessant  drumming  with  his  heels,  to 
get  his  mule  in  front,  is  hailed. 

"  Ho,  Petruccio,  what  is  the  meaning  of  all  this 
press  of  people  ?  " 

"  Festa,  Lordship,  at  Genezzano." 

"  What  Festa  ?  " 

"  Of  the  Madonna,  Lordship,"  and  touches  his 
hat,  for  they  are  all  dreadfully  afraid  of  her  for 
some  reason  or  other. 

We  are  in  luck,  this  being  the  great  festa  of  the 


164  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

year  among  the  mountains,  —  a  thing  which  people 
go  out  of  Rome  to  see. 

"  Where  is  Genezzano  ?  " 

"  Just  over  yonder,  Lordship,"  and  pointed  to  the 
left,  where  was  what  seemed  like  a  monstrous  crys- 
tallization of  rock  on  the  crown  of  a  hill,  with  three 
or  four  taller  crags  of  castle  towering  in  the  midst, 
and  all  gray,  except  the  tiled  roofs,  whose  wrin- 
kled sides  were  gold-washed  with  a  bright  yellow 
lichen,  as  if  ripples,  turned  by  some  spell  to  stone, 
had  contrived  to  detain  the  sunshine  with  which  they 
were  touched  at  the  moment  of  transformation. 

The  road,  wherever  it  came  into  sight,  burned 
with  brilliant  costumes,  like  an  illuminated  page 
of  Froissart.  Gigantic  guide  meanwhile  shows  an 
uncomfortable  and  fidgety  reluctance  to  turn  aside 
and  enter  fairyland,  which  is  wholly  unaccountable. 
Is  the  huge  earthen  creature  an  Af  rite,  under  sa- 
cred pledge  to  Solomon,  and  in  danger  of  being 
sealed  up  again,  if  he  venture  near  the  festival  of 
our  Blessed  Lady  ?  If  so,  that  also  were  a  cere- 
mony worth  seeing,  and  we  insist.  He  wriggles 
and  swings  his  great  feet  with  an  evident  impulse 
to  begin  kicking  the  sides  of  his  mule  again  and 
fly.  The  way  over  the  hills  from  Genezzano  to 
Olevano  he  pronounces  scomodissima,  demanding 
of  every  peasant  who  goes  by  if  it  be  not  entirely 
impassable.  This  leading  question,  put  in  all  the 
tones  of  plausible  entreaty  he  can  command,  meets 
the  invariable  reply,  "  E  scomoda,  davvero  ;  ma 
per  le  bestie  —  eh  !  "  (it  is  bad,  of  a  truth,  but  for 
the  beasts  —  eh !)  and  then  one  of  those  indescrib- 


ITALY  165 

able  shrugs,  unintelligible  at  first  as  the  compass 
to  a  savage,  but  in  which  the  expert  can  make 
twenty  hair's-breadth  distinctions  between  N.  E. 
and  N.  N.  E. 

Finding  that  destiny  had  written  it  on  his  fore- 
head, the  guide  at  last  turned  and  went  cantering 
and  kicking  toward  Genezzano,  we  following.  Just 
before  you  reach  the  town,  the  road  turns  sharply 
to  the  right,  and,  crossing  a  little  gorge,  loses  itself 
in  the  dark  gateway.  Outside  the  gate  is  an  open 
space,  which  formicated  with  peasantry  in  every 
variety  of  costume  that  was  not  Parisian.  Laugh- 
ing women  were  climbing  upon  their  horses  (which 
they  bestride  like  men)  ;  pilgrims  were  chanting, 
and  beggars  (the  howl  of  an  Italian  beggar  in  the 
country  is  something  terrible)  howling  in  discord- 
ant rivalry.  It  was  a  scene  lively  enough  to  make 
Heraclitus  shed  a  double  allowance  of  tears ;  but 
our  giant  was  still  discomforted.  As  soon  as  we 
had  entered  the  gate,  he  dodged  into  a  little  back- 
street,  just  as  we  were  getting  out  of  which  the 
mystery  of  his  unwillingness  was  cleared  up.  He 
had  been  endeavoring  to  avoid  a  creditor.  But  it 
so  chanced  (as  Fate  can  hang  a  man  with  even  a 
rope  of  sand)  that  the  enemy  was  in  position  just 
at  the  end  of  this  very  lane,  where  it  debouched 
into  the  Piazza  of  the  town. 

The  disputes  of  Italians  are  very  droll  things, 
and  I  will  accordingly  bag  that  which  is  now  im- 
minent, as  a  specimen.  They  quarrel  as  unac- 
countably as  dogs,  who  put  their  noses  together, 
dislike  each  other's  kind  of  smell,  and  instantly 


166          LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

tumble  one  over  the  other,  with  noise  enough  to 
draw  the  eyes  of  a  whole  street.  So  these  peo- 
ple burst  out,  without  apparent  preliminaries,  into 
a  noise  and  fury  and  war-dance  which  would  imply 
the  very  utmost  pitch  and  agony  of  exasperation. 
And  the  subsidence  is  as  sudden.  They  explode 
each  other  on  mere  contact,  as  if  by  a  law  of  na- 
ture, like  two  hostile  gases.  They  do  not  grow 
warm,  but  leap  at  once  from  zero  to  some  degree 
of  white-heat,  to  indicate  which  no  Anglo-Saxon 
thermometer  of  wrath  is  highly  enough  graduated. 
If  I  were  asked  to  name  one  universal  character- 
istic of  an  Italian  town,  I  should  say,  two  men 
clamoring  and  shaking  themselves  to  pieces  at 
each  other,  and  a  woman  leaning  lazily  out  of  a 
window,  and  perhaps  looking  at  something  else. 
Till  one  gets  used  to  this  kind  of  thing,  one  ex- 
pects some  horrible  catastrophe  ;  but  during  eight 
months  in  Italy  I  have  only  seen  blows  exchanged 
thrice.  In  the  present  case  the  explosion  was  of 
harmless  gunpowder. 

"  Why  -  haven't  -you-paid-those-fif  ty-  five-bajocchi- 
at-the-pizzicarolo's  ? "  began  the  adversary,  speak- 
ing with  such  inconceivable  rapidity  that  he  made 
only  one  word,  nay,  as  it  seemed,  one  monosylla- 
ble, of  the  whole  sentence.  Our  giant,  with  a 
controversial  genius  which  I  should  not  have  sus- 
pected in  him,  immediately,  and  with  great  adroit- 
ness, changed  the  ground  of  dispute,  and,  instead 
of  remaining  an  insolvent  debtor,  raised  himself  at 
once  to  the  ethical  position  of  a  moralist,  resisting 
an  unjust  demand  from  principle. 


ITALY  167 

"  It  was  only  forty-five,"  roared  he. 

"  But  I  say  j#/fo/-five,"  screamed  the  other,  and 
shook  his  close-cropped  head  as  a  boy  does  an  ap- 
ple on  the  end  of  a  switch,  as  if  he  meant  pre- 
sently to  jerk  it  off  at  his  antagonist. 

"  Birbone  ! "  yelled  the  guide,  gesticulating  so 
furiously  with  every  square  inch  of  his  ponderous 
body  that  I  thought  he  would  throw  his  mule  over, 
the  poor  beast  standing  all  the  while  with  droop- 
ing head  and  ears  while  the  thunders  of  this  man- 
quake  burst  over  him.  So  feels  the  tortoise  that 
sustains  the  globe  when  earth  suffers  fiery  convul- 
sions. 

"  Birbante  !  "  retorted  the  creditor,  and  the  op- 
probrious epithet  clattered  from  between  his  shak- 
ing jaws  as  a  refractory  copper  is  rattled  out  of 
a  Jehoiada-box  by  a  child. 

"  Andate  vi  far  friggere  /"  howled  giant. 

"  Andate  ditto,  ditto  !  "  echoed  creditor,  —  and 
behold,  the  thing  is  over !  The  giant  promises  to 
attend  to  the  affair  when  he  comes  back,  the  cred- 
itor returns  to  his  booth,  and  we  ride  on. 

Speaking  of  Italian  quarrels,  I  am  tempted  to 
parenthesize  here  another  which  I  saw  at  Civita 
Vecchia.  We  had  been  five  days  on  our  way  from 
Leghorn  in  a  French  steamer,  a  voyage  performed 
usually,  I  think,  in  about  thirteen  hours.  It  was 
heavy  weather,  blowing  what  a  sailor  would  call 
half  a  gale  of  wind,  and  the  caution  of  our  cap- 
tain, not  to  call  it  fear,  led  him  to  put  in  for  shelter 
first  at  Porto  Ferrajo  in  Elba,  and  then  at  Santo 
Stefano  on  the  Italian  coast.  Our  little  black 


168  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

water-beetle  of  a  mail-packet  was  knocked  about 
pretty  well,  and  all  the  Italian  passengers  disap- 
peared in  the  forward  cabin  before  we  were  out 
of  port.  When  we  were  fairly  at  anchor  within 
the  harbor  of  Civita  Vecchia,  they  crawled  out 
again,  sluggish  as  winter  flies,  their  vealy  faces 
mezzotinted  with  soot.  One  of  them  presently 
appeared  in  the  custom-house,  his  only  luggage 
being  a  cage  closely  covered  with  a  dirty  red  hand- 
kerchief, which  represented  his  linen. 

"  What  have  you  in  the  cage  ?  "  asked  the  doga- 
niere. 

"  Eh !  nothing  other  than  a  parrot." 

"  There  is  a  duty  of  one  scudo  and  one  bajoccho, 
then." 

"  Santo  diavolo  !  but  what  hoggishness !  " 

Thereupon  instant  and  simultaneous  blowup,  or 
rather  a  series  of  explosions,  like  those  in  honor  of 
a  Neapolitan  saint' s-day,  lasting  about  ten  minutes, 
and  followed  by  as  sudden  quiet.  In  the  course  of 
it,  the  owner  of  the  bird,  playing  irreverently  on 
the  first  half  of  its  name,  (pappagallo,')  hinted  that 
it  would  be  a  high  duty  for  his  Holiness  himself 
(Papa).  After  a  pause  for  breath,  he  said  quietly, 
as  if  nothing  had  happened,  "Very  good,  then, 
since  I  must  pay,  I  will,"  and  began  fumbling  for 
the  money. 

"Meanwhile,  do  me  the  politeness  to  show  me 
the  bird,"  said  the  officer. 

"  With  all  pleasure,"  and,  lifting  a  corner  of  the 
handkerchief,  there  lay  the  object  of  dispute  on  his 
back,  stone-dead,  with  his  claws  curled  up  help- 


ITALY  169 

lesslj  on  each  side  his  breast.  I  believe  the  owner 
would  have  been  pleased  had  it  even  been  his 
grandmother  who  had  thus  evaded  duty,  so  exqui- 
site is  the  pleasure  of  an  Italian  in  escaping  pay- 
ment of  anything. 

"I  make  a  present  of  the  poor  bird,"  said  he 
blandly. 

The  publican,  however,  seemed  to  feel  that  he 
had  been  somehow  cheated,  and  I  left  them  in  high 
debate,  as  to  whether  the  bird  were  dead  when 
it  entered  the  custom-house,  and,  if  it  had  been, 
whether  a  dead  parrot  were  dutiable.  Do  not 
blame  me  for  being  entertained  and  trying  to  en- 
tertain you  with  these  trifles.  I  remember  Virgil's 
stem 

"  Che  per  poco  fc  ehe  teco  non  mi  risso," 

but  Dante's  journey  was  of  more  import  to  himself 
and  others  than  mine. 

I  am  struck  by  the  freshness  and  force  of  the 
passions  in  Europeans,  and  cannot  help  feeling  as 
if  there  were  something  healthy  in  it.  When  I 
think  of  the  versatile  and  accommodating  habits  of 
America,  it  seems  like  a  land  without  thunder- 
storms. In  proportion  as  man  grows  commercial, 
does  he  also  become  dispassionate  and  incapable  of 
electric  emotions?  The  driving-wheels  of  all-pow- 
erful natures  are  in  the  back  of  the  head,  and,  as 
man  is  the  highest  type  of  organization,  so  a  nation 
is  better  or  worse  as  it  advances  toward  the  high- 
est type  of  man,  or  recedes  from  it.  But  it  is  ill 
with  a  nation  when  the  cerebrum  sucks  the  cerebel- 
lum dry,  for  it  cannot  live  by  intellect  alone.  The 


170  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

broad  foreheads  always  carry  the  day  at  last,  but 
only  when  they  are  based  on  or  buttressed  with 
massive  hind-heads.  It  would  be  easier  to  make  a 
people  great  in  whom  the  animal  is  vigorous,  than 
to  keep  one  so  after  it  has  begun  to  spindle  into 
over-intellectuality.  The  hands  that  have  grasped 
dominion  and  held  it  have  been  large  and  hard; 
those  from  which  it  has  slipped,  delicate,  and  apt 
for  the  lyre  and  the  pencil.  Moreover,  brain  is 
always  to  be  bought,  but  passion  never  comes  to 
market.  On  the  whole,  I  am  rather  inclined  to 
like  this  European  impatience  and  fire,  even  while 
I  laugh  at  it,  and  sometimes  find  myself  surmising 
whether  a  people  who,  like  the  Americans,  put  up 
quietly  with  all  sorts  of  petty  personal  impositions 
and  injustices,  will  not  at  length  find  it  too  great  a 
bore  to  quarrel  with  great  public  wrongs. 

Meanwhile,  I  must  remember  that  I  am  in  Genez- 
zano,  and  not  in  the  lecturer's  desk.  We  walked 
about  for  an  hour  or  two,  admiring  the  beauty 
and  grand  bearing  of  the  women,  and  the  pictur- 
esque vivacity  and  ever-renewing  unassuetude  of 
the  whole  scene.  Take  six  of  the  most  party-colored 
dreams,  break  them  to  pieces,  put  them  into  a 
fantasy-kaleidoscope,  and  when  you  look  through  it 
you  will  see  something  that  for  strangeness,  vivid- 
ness, and  mutability  looked  like  the  little  Piazza  of 
Genezzano  seen  from  the  church  porch.  As  we 
wound  through  the  narrow  streets  again  to  the 
stables  where  we  had  left  our  horses,  a  branch  of 
laurel  or  ilex  would  mark  a  wine-shop,  and,  looking 
till  our  eye  cooled  and  toned  itself  down  to  dusky 


ITALY  171 

sympathy  with  the  crypt,  we  could  see  the  smoky 
interior  sprinkled  with  white  head-cloths  and  scar- 
let bodices,  with  here  and  there  a  yellow  spot  of 
lettuce  or  the  red  inward  gleam  of  a  wine-flask. 
The  head-dress  is  precisely  of  that  most  ancient 
pattern  seen  on  Egyptian  statues,  and  so  colossal 
are  many  of  the  wearers,  that  you  might  almost 
think  you  saw  a  party  of  young  sphinxes  carousing 
in  the  sunless  core  of  a  pyramid. 

We  remounted  our  beasts,  and,  for  about  a  mile, 
cantered  gayly  along  a  fine  road,  and  then  turned 
into  a  by-path  along  the  flank  of  a  mountain. 
Here  the  guide's  strada  scomodissima  began,  and 
we  were  forced  to  dismount,  and  drag  our  horses 
downward  for  a  mile  or  two.  We  crossed  a  small 
plain  in  the  valley,  and  then  began  to  climb  the 
opposite  ascent.  The  path  was  perhaps  four  feet 
broad,  and  was  paved  with  irregularly  shaped  blocks 
of  stone,  which,  having  been  raised  and  lowered, 
tipped,  twisted,  undermined,  and  generally  capsized 
by  the  rains  and  frosts  of  centuries,  presented  the 
most  diabolically  ingenious  traps  and  pitfalls.  All 
the  while  the  scenery  was  beautiful.  Mountains 
of  every  shape  and  hue  changed  their  slow  outlines 
ever  as  we  moved,  now  opening,  now  closing  round 
us,  sometimes  peering  down  solemnly  at  us  over 
each  other's  shoulders,  and  then  sinking  slowly 
out  of  sight,  or,  at  some  sharp  turn  of  the  path, 
seeming  to  stride  into  the  valley  and  confront  us 
with  their  craggy  challenge,  —  a  challenge  which 
the  little  valleys  accepted,  if  we  did  not,  matching 
their  rarest  tints  of  gray  and  brown,  and  pink  and 


172  LEA  VES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

purple,  or  that  royal  dye  to  make  which  all  these 
were  profusely  melted  together  for  a  moment's  or- 
nament, with  as  many  shades  of  various  green  and 
yellow.  Gray  towns  crowded  and  clung  on  the 
tops  of  peaks  that  seemed  inaccessible.  We  owe  a 
great  deal  of  picturesqueness  to  the  quarrels  and 
thieveries  of  the  barons  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
traveller  and  artist  should  put  up  a  prayer  for  their 
battered  old  souls.  It  was  to  be  out  of  their  way 
and  that  of  the  Saracens  that  people  were  driven 
to  make  their  homes  in  spots  so  sublime  and  incon- 
venient that  the  eye  alone  finds  it  pleasant  to  climb 
up  to  them.  Nothing  else  but  an  American  land- 
company  ever  managed  to  induce  settlers  upon 
territory  of  such  uninhabitable  quality.  I  have 
seen  an  insect  that  makes  a  mask  for  himself  out 
of  the  lichens  of  the  rock  over  which  he  crawls, 
contriving  so  to  deceive  the  birds ;  and  the  towns 
in  this  wild  region  would  seem  to  have  been  built 
on  the  same  principle.  Made  of  the  same  stone 
with  the  cliffs  on  which  they  perch,  it  asks  good 
eyesight  to  make  them  out  at  the  distance  of  a  few 
miles,  and  every  wandering  mountain-mist  annihi- 
lates them  for  the  moment. 

At  intervals,  I  could  hear  the  giant,  after  dig- 
ging at  the  sides  of  his  mule  with  his  spurless 
heels,  growling  to  himself,  and  imprecating  an 
apoplexy  (accidente)  upon  the  path  and  him  who 
made  it.  This  is  the  universal  malediction  here, 
and  once  it  was  put  into  rhyme  for  my  benefit.  I 
was  coming  down  the  rusty  steps  of  San  Gregorio 
one  day,  and  having  paid  no  heed  to  a  stout  woman 


ITALY  173 

of  thirty  odd  who  begged  somewhat  obtrusively, 
she  screamed  after  me, 

"Ah,  vi  pigli  un  accidente, 
Voi  che  non  date  niente !  " 

Ah,  may  a  sudden  apoplexy, 

You  who  give  not,  come  and  vex  ye ! 

Our  guide  could  not  long  appease  his  mind  with 
this  milder  type  of  objurgation,  but  soon  intensi- 
fied it  into  accidentacrio,  which  means  a  selected 
apoplexy  of  uncommon  size  and  ugliness.  As  the 
path  grew  worse  and  worse,  so  did  the  repetition 
of  this  phrase  (for  he  was  slow  of  invention)  be- 
come more  frequent,  till  at  last  he  did  nothing 
but  kick  and  curse,  mentally,  I  have  no  doubt,  in- 
cluding us  in  his  malediction.  I  think  it  would 
have  gratified  Longinus  or  Fuseli  (both  of  whom 
commended  swearing)  to  have  heard  him.  Before 
long  we  turned  the  flank  of  the  hill  by  a  little 
shrine  of  the  Madonna,  and  there  was  Olevano  just 
above  us.  Like  the  other  towns  in  this  district,  it 
was  the  diadem  of  an  abrupt  peak  of  rock.  From 
the  midst  of  it  jutted  the  ruins  of  an  old  strong- 
hold of  the  Colonna.  Probably  not  a  house  has 
been  built  in  it  for  centuries.  To  enter  the  town, 
we  literally  rode  up  a  long  flight  of  stone  steps, 
and  soon  found  ourselves  in  the  Piazza.  We 
stopped  to  buy  some  cigars,  and  the  zigararo,  as 
he  rolled  them  up,  asked  if  we  did  not  want  din- 
ner. We  told  him  we  should  get  it  at  the  inn. 
Benissimo,  he  would  be  there  before  us.  What 
he  meant,  we  could  not  divine ;  but  it  turned  out 
that  he  was  the  landlord,  and  that  the  inn  only 


174  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

became  such  when  strangers  arrived,  relapsing 
again  immediately  into  a  private  dwelling.  We 
found  our  host  ready  to  receive  us,  and  went  up  to 
a  large  room  on  the  first  floor.  After  due  instruc- 
tions, we  seated  ourselves  at  the  open  windows,  — 
Storg  to  sketch,  and  I  to  take  a  mental  calotype  of 
the  view.  Among  the  many  lovely  ones  of  the 
day,  this  was  the  loveliest,  —  or  was  it  only  that 
the  charm  of  repose  was  added  ?  On  our  right 
was  the  silent  castle,  and  beyond  it  the  silent  moun- 
tains. To  the  left  we  looked  down  over  the  clus- 
tering houses  upon  a  campagna-valley  of  peaceful 
cultivation,  vineyards,  olive-orchards,  grain-fields 
in  their  earliest  green,  and  dark  stripes  of  new- 
ploughed  earth,  over  which  the  cloud  -  shadows 
melted  tracklessly  toward  the  hills  which  round 
softly  upward  to  Monte  Cavi. 

When  our  dinner  came,  and  with  it  a  flask  of 
drowsy  red  Aleatico,  like  ink  with  a  suspicion  of 
life-blood  in  it,  such  as  one  might  fancy  Shake- 
speare to  have  dipped  his  quill  in,  we  had  our  table 
so  placed  that  the  satisfaction  of  our  hunger  might 
be  dissensualized  by  the  view  from  the  windows. 
Many  a  glutton  has  eaten  up  farms  and  woodlands 
and  pastures,  and  so  did  we,  aesthetically,  saucing 
our  frittata  and  flavoring  our  Aleatico  with  land- 
scape. It  is  a  fine  thing  when  we  can  accustom 
our  animal  appetites  to  good  society,  when  body 
and  soul  (like  master  and  servant  in  an  Arab  tent) 
sit  down  together  at  the  same  board.  This  thought 
is  forced  upon  one  very  often  in  Italy,  as  one  pic- 
nics in  enchanted  spots,  where  Imagination  and 


ITALY  175 

Fancy  play  the  parts  of  the  unseen  waiters  in  the 
fairy-story,  and  serve  us  with  course  after  course 
of  their  ethereal  dishes.  Sense  is  satisfied  with 
less  and  simpler  food  when  sense  and  spirit  are  fed 
together,  and  the  feast  of  the  loaves  and  fishes  is 
spread  for  us  anew.  If  it  be  important  for  a  state 
to  educate  its  lower  classes,  so  is  it  for  us  person- 
ally to  instruct,  elevate,  and  refine  our  senses,  the 
lower  classes  of  our  private  body-politic,  which,  if 
left  to  their  own  brute  instincts,  will  disorder  or 
destroy  the  whole  commonwealth  with  flaming  in- 
surrection. 

After  dinner  came  our  guide  to  be  paid.  He,  too, 
had  had  his  frittata  and  his  fiasco  (or  two),  and 
came  back  absurdly  comic,  reminding  one  of  the 
giant  who  was  so  taken  in  by  the  little  tailor.  He 
was  not  in  the  least  tipsy ;  but  the  wine  had  ex- 
cited his  poor  wits,  whose  destiny  it  was  (awkward 
servants  as  they  were  !)  to  trip  up  and  tumble  over 
each  other  in  proportion  as  they  became  zealous. 
He  was  very  anxious  to  do  us  in  some  way  or  other ; 
he  only  vaguely  guessed  how,  but  felt  so  gigantic- 
ally good-natured  that  he  could  not  keep  his  face 
sober  long  enough.  It  is  quite  clear  why  the  Ital- 
ians have  no  word  but  recitare  to  express  acting, 
for  their  stage  is  no  more  theatric  than  their  street, 
and  to  exaggerate  in  the  least  would  be  ridiculous. 
We  graver-tempered  and  -mannered  Septentrions 
must  give  the  pegs  a  screw  or  two  to  bring  our 
spirits  up  to  nature's  concert-pitch.  Storg  and  I 
sat  enjoying  the  exhibition  of  our  giant,  as  if  we 
had  no  more  concern  in  it  than  as  a  comedy.  It 


176  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

was  nothing  but  a  spectacle  to  us,  at  which  we 
were  present  as  critics,  while  he  inveighed,  expos- 
tulated, argued,  and  besought,  in  a  breath.  Find- 
ing all  his  attempts  miscarry,  or  resulting  in  noth- 
ing more  solid  than  applause,  he  said,  "  Forse  non 
capiscono  ?  "  (Perhaps  you  don't  understand  ?) 
"  Capiscono  pur1  troppo"  (They  understand  only 
too  well,)  replied  the  landlord,  upon  which  terrce 
filius  burst  into  a  laugh,  and  began  begging  for 
more  buonamano.  Failing  in  this,  he  tightened  his 
sash,  offered  to  kiss  our  lordships'  hands,  an  act  of 
homage  which  we  declined,  and  departed,  carefully 
avoiding  Genezzano  on  his  return,  I  make  no  doubt. 
We  paid  our  bill,  and  after  I  had  written  in  the 


Bere  Aleatico 

Mi  &  molto  simpatico, 

went  down  to  the  door,  where  we  found  our  guides 
and  donkeys,  the  host's  handsome  wife  and  hand- 
somer daughter,  with  two  of  her  daughters,  and  a 
crowd  of  women  and  children  waiting  to  witness  the 
exit  of  the  foreigners.  We  made  all  the  mothers 
and  children  happy  by  a  discriminating  largesse  of 
copper  among  the  little  ones.  They  are  a  charming 
people,  the  natives  of  these  out-of-the-way  Italian 
towns,  if  kindness,  courtesy,  and  good  looks  make 
people  charming.  Our  beards  and  felt  hats,  which 
make  us  pass  for  artists,  were  our  passports  to  the 
warmest  welcome  and  the  best  cheer  everywhere. 
Reluctantly  we  mounted  our  donkeys,  and  trotted 
away,  our  guides  (a  man  and  a  boy)  running  by 
the  flank  (true  henchmen, 


ITALY  177 

or  flunkeys)  and  inspiring  the  little  animals  with 
pokes  in  the  side,  or  with  the  even  more  effectual 
ahrrrrrr  !  Is  there  any  radical  affinity  between 
this  rolling  fire  of  r's  and  the  word  arra,  which 
means  hansel  or  earnest-money?  The  sound  is 
the  same,  and  has  a  marvellous  spur-power  over 
the  donkey,  who  seems  to  understand  that  full 
payment  of  goad  or  cudgel  is  to  follow.  I  have 
known  it  to  move  even  a  Sicilian  mule,  the  least 
sensitive  and  most  obstinate  of  creatures  with  ears, 
except  a  British  church-warden. 

We  wound  along  under  a  bleak  hill,  more  deso- 
late than  anything  I  had  ever  seen.  The  old  gray 
rocks  seemed  not  to  thrust  themselves  out  of  the 
rusty  soil,  but  rather  to  be  stabbed  into  it,  as  if 
they  had  been  hailed  down  upon  it  by  some  volcano. 
There  was  nearly  as  much  look  of  design  as  there 
is  in  a  druidical  circle,  and  the  whole  looked  like 
some  graveyard  in  an  extinguished  world,  the  mon- 
ument of  mortality  itself,  such  as  Bishop  Wilkins 
might  have  found  in  the  moon,  if  he  had  ever  got 
thither.  The  path  grew  ever  wilder,  and  Rojate, 
the  next  town  we  came  to,  grim  and  grizzly  under 
a  grim  and  grizzly  sky  of  low-trailing  clouds  which 
had  suddenly  gathered,  looked  drearier  even  than 
the  desolations  we  had  passed.  It  was  easy  to  un- 
derstand why  rocks  should  like  to  live  here  well 
enough ;  but  what  could  have  brought  men  hither, 
and  then  kept  them  here,  was  beyond  all  reason- 
able surmise.  Barren  hills  stood  sullenly  aloof  all 
around,  incapable  of  any  crop  but  lichens. 

We  entered  the  gate,  and  found  ourselves  in  the 


178  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

midst  of  a  group  of  wild-looking  men  gathered 
about  the  door  of  a  wine-shop.  Some  of  them  were 
armed  with  long  guns,  and  we  saw  (for  the  first 
time  in  situ~)  the  tall  bandit  hat  with  ribbons 
wound  round  it,  —  such  as  one  is  familiar  with  in 
operas,  and  on  the  heads  of  those  inhabitants  of  the 
Scalinata  in  Rome,  who  have  a  costume  of  their 
own,  and  placidly  serve  as  models  through  the 
whole  pictorial  range  of  divine  and  human  nature, 
from  the  Padre  Eterno  to  Judas.  Twenty  years 
ago,  when  my  notion  of  an  Italian  was  divided  be- 
tween a  monk  and  a  bravo,  the  first  of  whom  did 
nothing  but  enter  at  secret  doors  and  drink  your 
health  in  poison,  while  the  other  lived  behind  cor- 
ners, supporting  himself  by  the  productive  industry 
of  digging  your  person  all  over  with  a  stiletto,  I 
should  have  looked  for  instant  assassination  from 
these  carousing  ruffians.  But  the  only  blood  shed  on 
the  occasion  was  that  of  the  grape.  A  ride  over  the 
mountains  for  two  hours  had  made  us  thirsty,  and 
two  or  three  bajocchi  gave  a  tumbler  of  vino  asci- 
utto  to  all  four  of  us.  "You  are  welcome,"  said 
one  of  the  men,  "  we  are  all  artists  after  a  fashion  ; 
we  are  all  brothers."  The  manners  here  are  more 
republican,  and  the  title  of  lordship  disappears 
altogether.  Another  came  up  and  insisted  that  we 
should  drink  a  second  flask  of  wine  as  his  guests. 
In  vain  we  protested ;  no  artist  should  pass  through 
Rojate  without  accepting  that  token  of  good- will, 
and  with  the  liberal  help  of  our  guides  we  contrived 
to  gulp  it  down.  He  was  for  another ;  but  we  pro- 
tested that  we  were  entirely  full,  and  that  it  was 


ITALY  179 

impossible.  I  dare  say  the  poor  fellow  would  have 
spent  a  week's  earnings  on  us,  if  we  would  have 
let  him.  We  proposed  to  return  the  civility,  and 
to  leave  a  paul  for  them  to  drink  a  good  journey  to 
us  after  we  were  gone ;  but  they  would  not  listen 
to  it.  Our  entertainer  followed  us  along  to  the 
Piazza,  begging  one  of  us  to  let  him  serve  as 
donkey-driver  to  Subiaco.  When  this  was  denied, 
he  said  that  there  was  a  festa  here  also,  and  that 
we  must  stop  long  enough  to  see  the  procession  of 
zitelle  (young  girls),  which  would  soon  begin.  But 
evening  was  already  gathering,  the  clouds  grew 
momently  darker,  and  fierce,  damp  gusts,  striking 
us  with  the  suddenness  of  a  blow,  promised  a  wild 
night.  We  had  still  eight  miles  of  mountain-path 
before  us,  and  we  struggled  away.  As  we  crossed 
the  next  summit  beyond  the  town,  a  sound  of  chant- 
ing drifted  by  us  on  the  wind,  wavered  hither  and 
thither,  now  heard,  now  lost,  then  a  doubtful  some- 
thing between  song  and  gust,  and,  lingering  a  few 
moments,  we  saw  the  white  head-dresses,  gliding 
two  by  two,  across  a  gap  between  the  houses.  The 
scene  and  the  music  were  both  in  neutral  tints, 
a  sketch,  as  it  were,  in  sepia  a  little  blurred. 

Before  long  the  clouds  almost  brushed  us  as  they 
eddied  silently  by,  and  then  it  began  to  rain,  first 
mistily,  and  then  in  thick,  hard  drops.  Fortu- 
nately there  was  a  moon,  shining  placidly  in  the 
desert  heaven  above  all  this  turmoil,  or  we  could 
not  have  found  our  path,  which  in  a  few  moments 
became  a  roaring  torrent  almost  knee-deep.  It 
was  a  cold  rain,  and  far  above  us,  where  the  moun- 


180  LEAVES   FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

tain-peaks  tore  gaps  in  the  clouds,  we  could  see  the 
white  silence  of  new-fallen  snow.  Sometimes  we 
had  to  dismount  and  wade,  —  a  circumstance  which 
did  not  make  our  saddles  more  comfortable  when 
we  returned  to  them  and  could  hear  them  go  crosA, 
crash,  as  the  water  gurgled  out  of  them  at  every 
jolt.  There  was  no  hope  of  shelter  nearer  than 
Subiaco,  no  sign  of  man,  and  no  sound  but  the 
multitudinous  roar  of  waters  on  every  side.  Rivu- 
let whispered  to  rivulet,  and  water-fall  shouted  to 
water-fall,  as  they  leaped  from  rock  to  rock,  all 
hurrying  to  reinforce  the  main  torrent  below,  which 
hummed  onward  toward  the  Anio  with  dilated 
heart.  So  gathered  the  hoarse  Northern  swarms 
to  descend  upon  sunken  Italy ;  and  so  forever  does 
physical  and  intellectual  force  seek  its  fatal  equi- 
librium, rushing  in  and  occupying  wherever  it  is 
drawn  by  the  attraction  of  a  lower  level. 

We  forded  large  streams  that  had  been  dry  beds 
an  hour  before  ;  and  so  sudden  was  the  creation  of 
the  floods,  that  it  gave  one  almost  as  fresh  a  feel- 
ing of  water  as  if  one  had  been  present  in  Eden 
when  the  first  rock  gave  birth  to  the  first  fountain. 
I  had  a  severe  cold,  I  was  wet  through  from  the  hips 
downward,  and  yet  I  never  enjoyed  anything  more 
in  my  life,  —  so  different  is  the  shower-bath  to 
which  we  doom  ourselves  from  that  whose  string  is 
pulled  by  the  prison- warden  compulsion.  After 
our  little  bearers  had  tottered  us  up  and  down  the 
dusky  steeps  of  a  few  more  mountain-spurs,  where 
a  misstep  would  have  sent  us  spinning  down  the 
fathomless  black  nowhere  below,  we  came  out  upon 


ITALY  181 

the  highroad,  and  found  it  a  fine  one,  as  all  the 
great  Italian  roads  are.  The  rain  broke  off  sud- 
denly, and  on  the  left,  seeming  about  half  a  mile 
away,  sparkled  the  lights  of  Subiaco,  flashing  inter- 
mittently like  a  knot  of  fire-flies  in  a  meadow.  The 
town,  owing  to  the  necessary  windings  of  the  road, 
was  still  three  miles  off,  and  just  as  the  guides  had 
prodded  and  ahrred  the  donkeys  into  a  brisk  jog- 
gle, I  resolved  to  give  up  my  saddle  to  the  boy,  and 
try  Tom  Coryate's  compasses.  It  was  partly  out 
of  humanity  to  myself  and  partly  to  him,  for  he 
was  tired  and  I  was  cold.  The  elder  guide  and  I 
took  the  lead,  and,  as  I  looked  back,  I  laughed  to 
see  the  lolling  ears  of  Storg's  donkey  thrust  from 
under  his  long  cloak,  as  if  he  were  coming  out 
from  a  black  Arab  tent.  We  soon  left  them  be- 
hind, and  paused  at  a  bridge  over  the  Anio  till  we 
heard  the  patter  of  little  hoofs  again.  The  bridge 
is  a  single  arch,  bent  between  the  steep  edges  of  a 
gorge  through  which  the  Anio  huddled  far  below, 
showing  a  green  gleam  here  and  there  in  the  strug- 
gling moonlight,  as  if  a  fish  rolled  up  his  burnished 
flank.  After  another  mile  and  a  half,  we  reached 
the  gate,  and  awaited  our  companions.  It  was 
dreary  enough,  —  waiting  always  is,  —  and  as  the 
snow-chilled  wind  whistled  through  the  damp  arch- 
way where  we  stood,  my  legs  illustrated  feelingly 
to  me  how  they  cool  water  in  the  East,  by  wrap- 
ping the  jars  with  wet  woollen  and  setting  them  in 
a  draught.  At  last  they  came  ;  I  remounted,  and 
we  went  sliding  through  the  steep,  wet  streets  till 
we  had  fairly  passed  through  the  whole  town.  Be- 


182  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

fore  a  long  building  of  two  stories,  without  a  symp- 
tom of  past  or  future  light,  we  stopped.  "  Ecco 
la  Paletta  !  "  said  the  guide,  and  began  to  pound 
furiously  on  the  door  with  a  large  stone,  which  he 
some  time  before  had  provided  for  the  purpose. 
After  a  long  period  of  sullen  irresponsiveness,  we 
heard  descending  footsteps,  light  streamed  through 
the  chinks  of  the  door,  and  the  invariable  "  Chi 
e  ?  "  which  precedes  the  unbarring  of  all  portals 
here,  came  from  within.  "  Due  forestieri"  an- 
swered the  guide,  and  the  bars  rattled  in  hasty 
welcome.  "  Make  us,"  we  exclaimed,  as  we  stiffly 
climbed  down  from  our  perches,  "  your  biggest  fire 
in  your  biggest  chimney,  and  then  we  will  talk  of 
supper !  "  In  five  minutes  two  great  laurel-fagots 
were  spitting  and  crackling  in  an  enormous  fire- 
place ;  and  Storg  and  I  were  in  the  costume  which 
Don  Quixote  wore  on  the  Brown  Mountain.  Of 
course  there  was  nothing  for  supper  but  ^frittata  ; 
but  there  are  worse  things  in  the  world  than  a 
frittata  con  prosciutto,  and  we  discussed  it  like  a 
society  just  emerging  from  barbarism,  the  upper 
half  of  our  persons  presenting  all  the  essentials  of 
an  advanced  civilization,  while  our  legs  skulked 
under  the  table  as  free  from  sartorial  impertinences 
as  those  of  the  noblest  savage  that  ever  ran  wild  in 
the  woods.  And  so  eccoci  finalmente  arrivati  ! 

21th.  —  Nothing  can  be  more  lovely  than  the 
scenery  about  Subiaco.  The  town  itself  is  built 
on  a  kind  of  cone  rising  from  the  midst  of  a  valley 
abounding  in  olives  and  vines,  with  a  superb 
mountain  horizon  around  it,  and  the  green  Anio 


ITALY  183 

cascading  at  its  feet.  As  you  walk  to  the  high- 
perched  convent  of  San  Benedetto,  you  look  across 
the  river  on  your  right  just  after  leaving  the  town, 
to  a  cliff  over  which  the  ivy  pours  in  torrents, 
and  in  which  dwellings  have  been  hollowed  out. 
In  the  black  doorway  of  every  one  sits  a  woman 
in  scarlet  bodice  and  white  head-gear,  with  a  dis- 
taff, spinning,  while  overhead  countless  nightin- 
gales sing  at  once  from  the  fringe  of  shrubbery. 
The  glorious  great  white  clouds  look  over  the 
mountain-tops  into  our  enchanted  valley,  and  some- 
times a  lock  of  their  vapory  wool  would  be  torn 
off,  to  lie  for  a  while  in  some  inaccessible  ravine 
like  a  snow-drift ;  but  it  seemed  as  if  no  shadow 
could  fly  over  our  privacy  of  sunshine  to-day. 
The  approach  to  the  monastery  is  delicious.  You 
pass  out  of  the  hot  sun  into  the  green  shadows 
of  ancient  ilexes,  leaning  and  twisting  every  way 
that  is  graceful,  their  branches  velvety  with  bril- 
liant moss,  in  which  grow  feathery  ferns,  fringing 
them  with  a  halo  of  verdure.  Then  comes  the  con- 
vent, with  its  pleasant  old  monks,  who  show  their 
sacred  vessels  (one  by  Cellini)  and  their  relics, 
among  which  is  a  finger-bone  of  one  of  the  Inno- 
cents. Lower  down  is  a  convent  of  Santa  Scholas- 
tica,  where  the  first  book  was  printed  in  Italy. 

But  though  one  may  have  daylight  till  after 
twenty-four  o'clock  in  Italy,  the  days  are  no  longer 
than  ours,  and  I  must  go  back  to  La  Paletta 
to  see  about  a  vettura  to  Tivoli.  I  leave  Storg 
sketching,  and  walk  slowly  down,  lingering  over 
the  ever-changeful  views,  lingering  opposite  the 


184  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

nightingale-cliff,  but  get  back  to  Subiaco  and  the 
vetturino  at  last.  The  growl  of  a  thunder-storm 
soon  brought  Storg  home,  and  we  leave  Subiaco 
triumphantly,  at  five  o'clock,  in  a  light  carriage, 
drawn  by  three  gray  stallions  (harnessed  abreast) 
on  the  full  gallop.  I  cannot  describe  our  drive, 
the  mountain-towns,  with  their  files  of  girls  wind- 
ing up  from  the  fountain  with  balanced  water-jars 
of  ruddy  copper,  or  chattering  round  it  bright- 
hued  as  parrots,  the  ruined  castles,  the  green  gleams 
of  the  capricious  river,  the  one  great  mountain 
that  soaked  up  all  the  rose  of  sunset,  and,  after 
all  else  grew  dim,  still  glowed  as  if  with  inward 
fires,  and,  later,  the  white  spray-smoke  of  Tivoli 
that  drove  down  the  valley  under  a  clear  cold 
moon,  contrasting  strangely  with  the  red  glare  of 
the  lime-furnace  on  the  opposite  hillside.  It  is 
well  that  we  can  be  happy  sometimes  without 
peeping  and  botanizing  in  the  materials  that  make 
us  so.  It  is  not  often  that  we  can  escape  the  evil 
genius  of  analysis  that  haunts  our  modern  day- 
light of  self-consciousness  (wir  haben  ja  aufge- 
Jdart  /)  and  enjoy  a  day  of  right  Chaucer. 

P.  S.  Now  that  I  am  printing  this,  a  dear  friend 
sends  me  an  old  letter,  and  says,  "  Slip  in  some- 
where, by  way  of  contrast,  what  you  wrote  me  of 
your  visit  to  Passawampscot."  It  is  odd,  almost 
painful,  to  be  confronted  with  your  past  self  and 
your  past  self's  doings,  when  you  have  forgotten 
both.  But  here  is  my  bit  of  American  scenery,  such 
as  it  is. 


ITALY  185 

While  we  were  waiting  for  the  boat,  we  had 
time  to  investigate  P.  a  little.  We  wandered  about 
with  no  one  to  molest  us  or  make  us  afraid.  No  ci- 
cerone was  lying  in  wait  for  us,  no  verger  expected 
with  funeral  solemnity  the  more  than  compulsory 
shilling.  I  remember  the  whole  population  of  Cor- 
tona  gathering  round  me,  and  beseeching  me  not 
to  leave  their  city  till  I  had  seen  the  lampadone, 
whose  keeper  had  unhappily  gone  out  for  a  walk, 
taking  the  key  with  him.  Thank  Fortune,  here 
were  no  antiquities,  no  galleries  of  Pre-Raphael- 
ite art,  every  lank  figure  looking  as  if  it  had  been 
stretched  on  a  rack,  before  which  the  Anglo-Saxon 
writhes  because  he  ought  to  like  them  and  can- 
not for  the  soul  of  him.  It  is  a  pretty  little  vil- 
lage, cuddled  down  among  the  hills,  the  clay  soil 
of  which  gives  them,  to  a  pilgrim  from  the  parched 
gravelly  inland,  a  look  of  almost  fanatical  green. 
The  fields  are  broad,  and  wholly  given  up  to  the 
grazing  of  cattle  and  sheep,  which  dotted  them 
thickly  in  the  breezy  sunshine.  The  open  doors 
of  a  barn,  through  which  the  wind  flowed  rustling 
the  loose  locks  of  the  mow,  attracted  us.  Swal- 
lows swam  in  and  out  with  level  wings,  or  crossed 
each  other,  twittering  in  the  dusky  mouth  of  their 
hay-scented  cavern.  Two  or  three  hens  and  a  cock 
(none  of  your  gawky  Shanghais,  long-legged  as  a 
French  peasant  on  his  stilts,  but  the  true  red  cock 
of  the  ballads,  full-chested,  coral-combed,  fountain- 
tailed)  were  inquiring  for  hay-seed  in  the  back- 
ground. What  frame  in  what  gallery  ever  en- 
closed such  a  picture  as  is  squared  within  the 


186  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

groundsel,  side  -  posts,  and  lintel  of  a  barn-door, 
whether  for  eye  or  fancy  ?  The  shining  floor  sug- 
gests the  flail -beat  of  autumn,  that  pleasantest 
of  monotonous  sounds,  and  the  later  husking -bee, 
where  the  lads  and  lasses  sit  round  laughingly  busy 
under  the  swinging  lantern. 

Here  we  found  a  fine,  stalwart  fellow  shearing 
oheep.  This  was  something  new  to  us,  and  we 
watched  him  for  some  time  with  many  questions, 
which  he  answered  with  off-hand  good-nature.  Go- 
ing away,  I  thanked  him  for  having  taught  me 
something.  He  laughed,  and  said,  "  Ef  you'll  take 
off  them  gloves  o'  yourn,  I  '11  give  ye  a  try  at  the 
practical  part  on  't."  He  was  in  the  right  of  it. 
I  never  saw  anything  handsomer  than  those  brown 
hands  of  his,  on  which  the  sinews  stood  out,  as  he 
handled  his  shears,  tight  as  a  drawn  bowstring. 
How  much  more  admirable  is  this  tawny  vigor, 
the  badge  of  fruitful  toil,  than  the  crop  of  early 
muscle  that  heads  out  under  the  forcing-glass  of 
the  gymnasium !  Foreigners  do  not  feel  easy  in 
America,  because  there  are  no  peasants  and  un- 
derlings here  to  be  humble  to  them.  The  truth  is, 
that  none  but  those  who  feel  themselves  only  arti- 
ficially the  superiors  of  our  sturdy  yeomen  see  in 
their  self-respect  any  uncomfortable  assumption  of 
equality.  It  is  the  last  thing  the  yeoman  is  likely 
to  think  of.  They  do  not  like  the  "  I  say,  ma 
good  fellah  "  kind  of  style,  and  commonly  contrive 
to  snub  it.  They  do  not  value  condescension  at 
the  same  rate  that  he  does  who  vouchsafes  it  to 
them.  If  it  be  a  good  thing  for  an  English  duke 


ITALY  187 

that  he  has  no  social  superiors,  I  think  it  can 
hardly  be  bad  for  a  Yankee  farmer.  If  it  be  a  bad 
thing  for  the  duke  that  he  meets  none  but  inferi- 
ors, it  cannot  harm  the  farmer  much  that  he  never 
has  the  chance.  At  any  rate,  there  was  no  thought 
of  incivility  in  my  friend  Hobbinol's  jibe  at  my 
kids,  only  a  kind  of  jolly  superiority.  But  I  did 
not  like  to  be  taken  for  a  city  gent,  so  I  told  him 
I  was  born  and  bred  in  the  country  as  well  as  he. 
He  laughed  again,  and  said,  "  Wai,  anyhow,  I  've 
the  advantage  of  ye,  for  you  never  see  a  sheep 
shore,  and  I  've  be'n  to  the  Opery  and  shore  sheep 
myself  into  the  bargain."  He  told  me  that  there 
were  two  hundred  sheep  in  the  town,  and  that  his 
father  could  remember  when  there  were  four  times 
as  many.  The  sea  laps  and  mumbles  the  soft  roots 
of  the  hills,  and  licks  away  an  acre  or  two  of  good 
pasturage  every  season.  The  father,  an  old  man 
of  eighty,  stood  looking  on,  pleased  with  his  son's 
wit,  and  brown  as  if  the  Passawampscot  fogs  were 
walnut-juice. 

We  dined  at  a  little  tavern,  with  a  gilded  ball 
hung  out  for  sign,  —  a  waif,  I  fancy,  from  some 
shipwreck.  The  landlady  was  a  brisk,  amusing 
little  body,  who  soon  informed  us  that  her  husband 
was  own  cousin  to  a  Senator  of  the  United  States. 
A  very  elaborate  sampler  in  the  parlor,  in  which 
an  obelisk  was  wept  over  by  a  somewhat  costly 
willow  in  silver  thread,  recorded  the  virtues  of  the 
Senator's  maternal  grandfather  and  grandmother. 
After  dinner,  as  we  sat  smoking  our  pipes  on  the 
piazza,  our  good  hostess  brought  her  little  daugh- 


188          LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL. 

ter,  and  made  her  repeat  verses  utterly  unintelli- 
gible, but  conjecturally  moral,  and  certainly  de- 
pressing. Once  set  agoing,  she  ran  down  like  an 
alarm-clock.  We  awaited  her  subsidence  as  that  of 
a  shower  or  other  inevitable  natural  phenomenon. 
More  refreshing  was  the  talk  of  a  tall  returned 
Californian,  who  told  us,  among  other  things,  that 
"  he  should  n't  mind  Panahmy's  bein'  sunk,  oilers 
providin'  there  war  n't  none  of  our  folks  onto  it 
when  it  went  down  ! " 

Our  landlady's  exhibition  of  her  daughter  puts 
me  in  mind  of  something  similar,  yet  oddly  differ- 
ent, which  happened  to  Storg  and  me  at  Palestrina. 
We  jointly  praised  the  beauty  of  our  stout  locan- 
dieras  little  girl.  "  Ah,  she  is  nothing  to  her 
eldest  sister  just  married,"  said  the  mother.  "  If 
you  could  see  her !  She  is  bella,  bell  a,  BELLA  !  " 
We  thought  no  more  of  it ;  but  after  dinner,  the 
good  creature,  with  no  warning  but  a  tap  at  the 
door  and  a  humble  con  permesso,  brought  her  in 
all  her  bravery,  and  showed  her  off  to  us  as  simply 
and  naturally  as  if  she  had  been  a  picture.  The 
girl,  who  was  both  beautiful  and  modest,  bore  it 
with  the  dignified  aplomb  of  a  statue.  She  knew 
we  admired  her,  and  liked  it,  but  with  the  indif- 
ference of  a  rose.  There  is  something  very  charm- 
ing, I  think,  in  this  wholly  unsophisticated  con- 
sciousness, with  no  alloy  of  vanity  or  coquetry. 


A   FEW  BITS  OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC      189 

IV. 

A   FEW   BITS   OP   ROMAN   MOSAIC. 

Byron  hit  the  white,  which  he  often  shot  very 
wide  of  in  his  Italian  Guide  Book,  when  he  called 
Rome  "my  country."  But  it  is  a  feeling  which 
comes  to  one  slowly,  and  is  absorbed  into  one's 
system  during  a  long  residence.  Perhaps  one  does 
not  feel  it  till  one  has  gone  away,  as  things  always 
seem  fairer  when  we  look  back  at  them,  and  it  is 
out  of  that  inaccessible  tower  of  the  past  that  Long- 
ing leans  and  beckons.  However  it  be,  Fancy  gets 
a  rude  shock  at  entering  Rome,  which  it  takes  her 
a  great  while  to  get  over.  She  has  gradually  made 
herself  believe  that  she  is  approaching  a  city  of  the 
dead,  and  has  seen  nothing  on  the  road  from  Civita 
Vecchia  to  disturb  that  theory.  Milestones,  with 
"  Via  Aurelia  "  carved  upon  them,  have  confirmed 
it.  It  is  eighteen  hundred  years  ago  with  her,  and 
on  the  dial  of  time  the  shadow  has  not  yet  trembled 
over  the  line  that  marks  the  beginning  of  the  first 
century.  She  arrives  at  the  gate,  and  a  dirty,  blue 
man,  with  a  cocked  hat  and  a  white  sword-belt, 
asks  for  her  passport.  Then  another  man,  as  like 
the  first  as  one  spoon  is  like  its  fellow,  and  hav- 
ing, like  him,  the  look  of  being  run  in  a  mould, 
tells  her  that  she  must  go  to  the  custom-house.  It 
is  as  if  a  ghost,  who  had  scarcely  recovered  from 
the  jar  of  hearing  Charon  say,  "  I  '11  trouble  you 
for  your  obolus,  if  you  please,"  should  have  his 


190  LEAVES   FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

portmanteau  seized  by  the  Stygian  tide-waiters  to 
be  searched.  Is  there  anything,  then,  contraband 
of  death  ?  asks  poor  Fancy  of  herself. 

But  it  is  the  misfortune  (or  the  safeguard)  of 
the  English  mind  that  Fancy  is  always  an  outlaw, 
liable  to  be  laid  by  the  heels  wherever  Constable 
Common  Sense  can  catch  her.  She  submits  quietly 
as  the  postilion  cries,  "  Tee-ip  !  "  cracks  his  whip, 
and  the  rattle  over  the  pavement  begins,  strug- 
gles a  moment  when  the  pillars  of  the  colonnade 
stalk  ghostly  by  in  the  moonlight,  and  finally  gives 
up  all  for  lost  when  she  sees  Bernini's  angels  polk- 
ing on  their  pedestals  along  the  sides  of  the  Ponte 
Sant'  Angelo  with  the  emblems  of  the  Passion  in 
their  arms. 

You  are  in  Rome,  of  course ;  the  shirr o  said  so, 
the  doganiere  bowed  it,  and  the  postilion  swore  it ; 
but  it  is  a  Rome  of  modern  houses,  muddy  streets, 
dingy  caffes,  cigar-smokers,  and  French  soldiers, 
the  manifest  junior  of  Florence.  And  yet  full  of 
anachronisms,  for  in  a  little  while  you  pass  the  col- 
umn of  Antoninus,  find  the  Dogana  in  an  ancient 
temple  whose  furrowed  pillars  show  through  the 
recent  plaster,  and  feel  as  if  you  saw  the  statue  of 
Minerva  in  a  Paris  bonnet.  You  are  driven  to  a 
hotel  where  all  the  barbarian  languages  are  spoken 
in  one  wild  conglomerate  by  the  Commissionnaire, 
have  your  dinner  wholly  in  French,  and  wake  the 
next  morning  dreaming  of  the  Tenth  Legion,  to  see 
a  regiment  of  Chasseurs  de  Vincennes  trotting  by. 

For  a  few  days  one  undergoes  a  tremendous  re- 
coil. Other  places  have  a  distinct  meaning.  Lon- 


A    FEW  BITS   OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC       191 

don  is  the  visible  throne  of  King  Stock ;  Versailles 
is  the  apotheosis  of  one  of  Louis  XIV.'s  cast  peri- 
wigs; Florence  and  Pisa  are  cities  of  the  Middle 
Ages ;  but  Rome  seems  to  be  a  parody  upon  itself. 
The  ticket  that  admits  you  to  see  the  starting  of 
the  horses  at  carnival  has  S.  P.  Q.  R.  at  the  top  of 
it,  and  you  give  the  custode  a  paul  for  showing  you 
the  wolf  that  suckled  Romulus  and  Remus.  The 
Senatus  seems  to  be  a  score  or  so  of  elderly  gentle- 
men in  scarlet,  and  the  Populusque  Romanus  a 
swarm  of  nasty  friars. 

But  there  is  something  more  than  mere  earth  in 
the  spot  where  great  deeds  have  been  done.  The 
surveyor  cannot  give  the  true  dimensions  of  Mara- 
thon or  Lexington,  for  they  are  not  reducible  to 
square  acres.  Dead  glory  and  greatness  leave 
ghosts  behind  them,  and  departed  empire  has  a 
metempsychosis,  if  nothing  else  has.  Its  spirit 
haunts  the  grave,  and  waits,  and  waits  till  at  last 
it  finds  a  body  to  its  mind,  slips  into  it,  and  histo- 
rians moralize  on  the  fluctuation  of  human  affairs. 
By  and  by,  perhaps,  enough  observations  will 
have  been  recorded  to  assure  us  that  these  recur- 
rences are  firmamental,  and  historionomers  will 
have  measured  accurately  the  sidereal  years  of 
races.  When  that  is  once  done,  events  will  move 
with  the  quiet  of  an  orrery,  and  nations  will  con- 
sent to  their  peridynamis  and  apodynamis  with 
planetary  composure. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  you  become  gradually  aware 
of  the  presence  of  this  imperial  ghost  among  the 
Roman  ruins.  You  receive  hints  and  startles  of  it 


192  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

through  the  senses  first,  as  the  horse  always  shies 
at  the  apparition  before  the  rider  can  see  it.  Then, 
little  by  little,  you  become  assured  of  it,  and  seem 
to  hear  the  brush  of  its  mantle  through  some  hall 
of  Caracalla's  baths,  or  one  of  those  other  solitudes 
of  Rome.  And  those  solitudes  are  without  a  par- 
allel; for  it  is  not  the  mere  absence  of  man,  but 
the  sense  of  his  departure,  that  makes  a  profound 
loneliness.  Musing  upon  them,  you  cannot  but 
feel  the  shadow  of  that  disembodied  empire,  and, 
remembering  how  the  foundations  of  the  Capitol 
were  laid  where  a  human  head  was  turned  up,  you 
are  impelled  to  prophesy  that  the  Idea  of  Rome 
will  incarnate  itself  again  as  soon  as  an  Italian 
brain  is  found  large  enough  to  hold  it,  and  to  give 
unity  to  those  discordant  members. 

But,  though  I  intend  to  observe  no  regular  pat- 
tern in  my  Roman  mosaic,  which  will  resemble 
more  what  one  finds  in  his  pockets  after  a  walk,  — 
a  pagan  cube  or  two  from  the  palaces  of  the  CaB- 
sars,  a  few  Byzantine  bits,  given  with  many  shrugs 
of  secrecy  by  a  lay-brother  at  San  Paolo  fuori  le 
mura,  and  a  few  more  (quite  as  ancient)  from  the 
manufactory  at  the  Vatican,  —  it  seems  natural  to 
begin  what  one  has  to  say  of  Rome  with  something 
about  St.  Peter's ;  for  the  saint  sits  at  the  gate 
here  as  well  as  in  Paradise. 

It  is  very  common  for  people  to  say  that  they 
are  disappointed  in  the  first  sight  of  St.  Peter's ; 
and  one  hears  much  the  same  about  Niagara.  I 
cannot  help  thinking  that  the  fault  is  in  them- 
selves ;  and  that  if  the  church  and  the  cataract 


A   FEW  BITS  OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC      193 

were  in  the  habit  of  giving  away  their  thoughts 
with  that  rash  generosity  which  characterizes  tour- 
ists, they  might  perhaps  say  of  their  visitors, 
"  Well,  if  you  are  those  Men  of  whom  we  have 
heard  so  much,  we  are  a  little  disappointed,  to  tell 
the  truth !  "  The  refined  tourist  expects  some- 
what too  much  when  he  takes  it  for  granted  that 
St.  Peter's  will  at  once  decorate  him  with  the  order 
of  imagination,  just  as  Victoria  knights  an  alder- 
man when  he  presents  an  address.  Or  perhaps 
he  has  been  getting  up  a  little  architecture  on  the 
road  from  Florence,  and  is  discomfited  because  he 
does  not  know  whether  he  ought  to  be  pleased  or 
not,  which  is  very  much  as  if  he  should  wait  to  be 
told  whether  it  was  fresh  water  or  salt  which  makes 
the  exhaustless  grace  of  Niagara's  emerald  curve, 
before  he  benignly  consented  to  approve.  It  would 
be  wiser,  perhaps,  for  him  to  consider  whether, 
if  Michael  Angelo  had  had  the  building  of  him, 
his  own  personal  style  would  not  have  been  more 
impressive. 

It  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  minds  are  of  as 
many  different  orders  as  cathedrals,  and  that  the 
Gothic  imagination  is  vexed  and  discommoded  in 
the  vain  endeavor  to  flatten  its  pinnacles,  and  fit 
itself  into  the  round  Roman  arches.  But  if  it  be 
impossible  for  a  man  to  like  everything,  it  is  quite 
possible  for  him  to  avoid  being  driven  mad  by  what 
does  not  please  him;  nay,  it  is  the  imperative 
duty  of  a  wise  man  to  find  out  what  that  secret  is 
which  makes  a  thing  pleasing  to  another.  In  ap- 
proaching St.  Peter's,  one  must  take  his  Protestant 


194  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

shoes  off  his  feet,  and  leave  them  behind  him,  in 
the  Piazza  Eustieucei.  Otherwise  the  great  Basil- 
ica, with  those  outstretching  colonnades  of  Bra- 
mante,  will  seem  to  be  a  bloated  spider  lying  in 
wait  for  him,  the  poor  heretic  fly.  As  he  lifts  the 
heavy  leathern  flapper  over  the  door,  and  is  dis- 
charged into  the  interior  by  its  impetuous  recoil, 
let  him  disburthen  his  mind  altogether  of  stone  and 
mortar,  and  think  only  that  he  is  standing  before 
the  throne  of  a  dynasty  which,  even  in  its  decay,  is 
the  most  powerful  the  world  ever  saw.  Mason- 
work  is  all  very  well  in  itself,  biit  it  has  nothing  to 
do  with  the  affair  at  present  in  hand. 

Suppose  that  a  man  in  pouring  down  a  glass  of 
claret  could  drink  the  South  of  France,  that  he 
could  so  disintegrate  the  wine  by  the  force  of  imag- 
ination as  to  taste  in  it  all  the  clustered  beauty  and 
bloom  of  the  grape,  all  the  dance  and  song  and  sun- 
burnt jollity  of  the  vintage.  Or  suppose  that  in 
eating  bread  he  could  transubstantiate  it  with  the 
tender  blade  of  spring,  the  gleam-flitted  corn-ocean 
of  summer,  the  royal  autumn,  with  its  golden  beard, 
and  the  merry  funerals  of  harvest.  This  is  what 
the  great  poets  do  for  us,  we  cannot  tell  how,  with 
their  fatally-chosen  words,  crowding  the  happy  veins 
of  language  again  with  all  the  life  and  meaning  and 
music  that  had  been  dribbling  away  from  them 
since  Adam.  And  this  is  what  the  Roman  Church 
does  for  religion,  feeding  the  soul  not  with  the  es- 
sential religious  sentiment,  not  with  a  drop  or  two 
of  the  tincture  of  worship,  but  making  us  feel  one 
by  one  all  those  original  elements  of  which  worship 


A   FEW  BITS  OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC      195 

is  composed  ;  not  bringing  the  end  to  us,  but  mak- 
ing us  pass  over  and  feel  beneath  our  feet  all  the 
golden  rounds  of  the  ladder  by  which  the  climbing 
generations  have  reached  that  end  ;  not  handing 
us  drily  a  dead  and  extinguished  Q.  E.  D.,  but  let- 
ting it  rather  declare  itself  by  the  glory  with  which 
it  interfuses  the  incense-clouds  of  wonder  and  aspi- 
ration and  beauty  in  which  it  is  veiled.  The  se- 
cret of  her  power  is  typified  in  the  mystery  of  the 
Real  Presence.  She  is  the  only  church  that  has 
been  loyal  to  the  heart  and  soul  of  man,  that  has 
clung  to  her  faith  in  the  imagination,  and  that 
would  not  give  over  her  symbols  and  images  and 
sacred  vessels  to  the  perilous  keeping  of  the  icono- 
clast Understanding.  She  has  never  lost  sight  of 
the  truth,  that  the  product  human  nature  is  com- 
posed of  the  sum  of  flesh  and  spirit,  and  has  accord- 
ingly regarded  both  this  world  and  the  next  as  the 
constituents  of  that  other  world  which  we  possess 
by  faith.  She  knows  that  poor  Panza,  the  body, 
has  his  kitchen  longings  and  visions,  as  well  as  Qui- 
xote, the  soul,  his  ethereal,  and  has  wit  enough  to 
supply  him  with  the  visible,  tangible  raw  material 
of  imagination.  She  is  the  only  poet  among  the 
churches,  and,  while  Protestantism  is  unrolling  a 
pocket  surveyor's-plan,  takes  her  votary  to  the  pin- 
nacle of  her  temple,  and  shows  him  meadow,  up- 
land, and  tillage,  cloudy  heaps  of  forest  clasped 
with  the  river's  jewelled  arm,  hillsides  white  with 
the  perpetual  snow  of  flocks,  and,  beyond  all,  the 
interminable  heave  of  the  unknown  ocean.  Her 
empire  may  be  traced  upon  the  map  by  the  boun- 


196  LEA  VES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

daries  of  races  ;  the  understanding  is  her  great 
foe ;  and  it  is  the  people  whose  vocabulary  was  in- 
complete till  they  had  invented  the  archword  Hum- 
bug that  defies  her.  With  that  leaden  bullet  John 
Bull  can  bring  down  Sentiment  when  she  flies  her 
highest.  And  the  more  the  pity  for  John  Bull. 
One  of  these  days  some  one  whose  eyes  are  sharp 
enough  will  read  in  the  Times  a  standing  adver- 
tisement, "  Lost,  strayed,  or  stolen  from  the  farm- 
yard of  the  subscriber  the  valuable  horse  Pega- 
sus. Probably  has  on  him  part  of  a  new  plough- 
harness,  as  that  is  also  missing.  A  suitable  reward, 
etc.  J.  BULL." 

Protestantism  reverses  the  poetical  process  I 
have  spoken  of  above,  and  gives  not  even  the  bread 
of  life,  but  instead  of  it  the  alcohol,  or  distilled 
intellectual  result.  This  was  very  well  so  long  as 
Protestantism  continued  to  protest ;  for  enthusiasm 
sublimates  the  understanding  into  imagination. 
But  now  that  she  also  has  become  an  establish- 
ment, she  begins  to  perceive  that  she  made  a 
blunder  in  trusting  herself  to  the  intellect  alone. 
She  is  beginning  to  feel  her  way  back  again,  as 
one  notices  in  Puseyism,  and  other  such  hints. 
One  is  put  upon  reflection  when  one  sees  burly 
Englishmen,  who  dine  on  beef  and  porter  every 
day,  marching  proudly  through  St.  Peter's  on 
Palm  Sunday,  with  those  frightfully  artificial  palm- 
branches  in  their  hands.  Romanism  wisely  pro- 
vides for  the  childish  in  men. 

Therefore  I  say  again,  that  one  must  lay  aside 
his  Protestantism  in  order  to  have  a  true  feeling 


A   FEW  BITS  OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC       197 

of  St.  Peter's.  Here  in  Rome  is  the  laboratory  of 
that  mysterious  enchantress,  who  has  known  so 
well  how  to  adapt  herself  to  all  the  wants,  or,  if 
you  will,  the  weaknesses  of  human  nature,  making 
the  retirement  of  the  convent-cell  a  merit  to  the 
solitary,  the  scourge  or  the  fast  a  piety  to  the  as- 
cetic, the  enjoyment  of  pomp  and  music  and  incense 
a  religious  act  in  the  sensual,  and  furnishing  for 
the  very  soul  itself  a  confidante  in  that  ear  of  the 
dumb  confessional,  where  it  may  securely  disbur- 
then  itself  of  its  sins  and  sorrows.  And  the  dome 
of  St.  Peter's  is  the  magic  circle  within  which  she 
works  her  most  potent  incantations.  I  confess  that 
I  could  not  enter  it  alone  without  a  kind  of  awe. 

But,  setting  entirely  aside  the  effect  of  this 
church  upon  the  imagination,  it  is  wonderful,  if 
one  consider  it  only  materially.  Michael  Angelo 
created  a  new  world  in  which  everything  was  colos- 
sal, and  it  might  seem  that  he  built  this  as  a  fit 
temple  for  those  gigantic  figures  with  which  he 
peopled  it  to  worship  in.  Here  his  Moses  should 
be  high-priest,  the  service  should  be  chanted  by  his 
prophets  and  sibyls,  and  those  great  pagans  should 
be  brought  hither  from  San  Lorenzo  in  Florence, 
to  receive  baptism. 

However  unsatisfactory  in  other  matters,  statis- 
tics are  of  service  here.  I  have  seen  a  refined 
tourist  who  entered,  Murray  in  hand,  sternly  re- 
solved to  have  St.  Peter's  look  small,  brought  to 
terms  at  once  by  being  told  that  the  canopy  over 
the  high  altar  (looking  very  like  a  four-post  bed- 
stead) was  ninety-eight  feet  high.  If  he  still  ob- 


198  LEA  VES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

stinates  himself,  he  is  finished  by  being  made  to 
measure  one  of  the  marble  putti,  which  look  like 
rather  stoutish  babies,  and  are  found  to  be  six  feet, 
every  sculptor's  son  of  them.  This  ceremony  is  the 
more  interesting,  as  it  enables  him  to  satisfy  the 
guide  of  his  proficiency  in  the  Italian  tongue  by 
calling  them  putty  at  every  convenient  opportunity. 
Otherwise  both  he  and  his  assistant  terrify  each 
other  into  mutual  unintelligibility  with  that  lingua 
franca  of  the  English-speaking  traveller,  which  is 
supposed  to  bear  some  remote  affinity  to  the  French 
language,  of  which  both  parties  are  as  ignorant  as 
an  American  Ambassador. 

Murray  gives  all  these  little  statistical  nudges  to 
the  Anglo-Saxon  imagination ;  but  he  knows  that 
its  finest  nerves  are  in  the  pocket,  and  accordingly 
ends  by  telling  you  how  much  the  church  cost.  I 
forget  how  much  it  is ;  but  it  cannot  be  more,  I 
fancy,  than  the  English  national  debt  multiplied 
into  itself  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  times.  If 
the  pilgrim,  honestly  anxious  for  a  sensation,  will 
work  out  this  little  sum,  he  will  be  sure  to  receive 
all  that  enlargement  of  the  imaginative  faculty 
which  arithmetic  can  give  him.  Perhaps  the  most 
dilating  fact,  after  all,  is  that  this  architectural 
world  has  also  a  separate  atmosphere,  distinct  from 
that  of  Rome  by  some  ten  degrees,  and  unvarying 
through  the  year. 

I  think  that,  on  the  whole,  Jonathan  gets  ready 
to  be  pleased  with  St.  Peter's  sooner  than  Bull. 
Accustomed  to  our  lath  and  plaster  expedients  for 
churches,  the  portable  sentry-boxes  of  Zion,  mere 


A   FEW  BITS   OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC       199 

solidity  and  permanence  are  pleasurable  in  them- 
selves ;  and  if  he  get  grandeur  also,  he  has  Gospel 
measure.  Besides,  it  is  easy  for  Jonathan  to  travel. 
He  is  one  drop  of  a  fluid  mass,  who  knows  where 
his  home  is  to-day,  but  can  make  no  guess  of  where 
it  may  be  to-morrow.  Even  in  a  form  of  govern- 
ment he  only  takes  lodgings  for  the  night,  and  is 
ready  to  pay  his  bill  and  be  off  in  the  morning. 
He  should  take  his  motto  from  Bishop  Golias's 
"  Mihi  est  propositum  in  tdberna  mori,"  though 
not  in  the  sufistic  sense  of  that  misunderstood 
Churchman.  But  Bull  can  seldom  be  said  to  travel 
at  all,  since  the  first  step  of  a  true  traveller  is  out 
of  himself.  He  plays  cricket  and  hunts  foxes  on 
the  Campagna,  makes  entries  in  his  betting-book 
while  the  Pope  is  giving  his  benediction,  and  points 
out  Lord  Calico  to  you  awfully  during  the  Sistine 
Miserere.  If  he  let  his  beard  grow,  it  always  has 
a  startled  air,  as  if  it  suddenly  remembered  its 
treason  to  Sheffield,  and  only  makes  him  look  more 
English  than  ever.  A  masquerade  is  impossible  to 
him,  and  his  fancy  balls  are  the  solemnest  facts  in 
the  world.  Accordingly,  he  enters  St.  Peter's  with 
the  dome  of  St.  Paul's  drawn  tight  over  his  eyes, 
like  a  criminal's  cap,  and  ready  for  instant  execu- 
tion rather  than  confess  that  the  English  Wren 
had  not  a  stronger  wing  than  the  Italian  Angel. 
1  like  this  in  Bull,  and  it  renders  him  the  pleasant- 
est  of  travelling-companions ;  for  he  makes  you 
take  England  along  with  you,  and  thus  you  have 
two  countries  at  once.  And  one  must  not  forget 
in  an  Italian  inn  that  it  is  to  Bull  he  owes  the  clean 


200  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

napkins  and  sheets,  and  the  privilege  of  his  morn- 
ing bath.  Nor  should  Bull  himself  fail  to  remem- 
ber that  he  ate  with  his  fingers  till  the  Italian  gave 
him  a  fork. 

Browning  has  given  the  best  picture  of  St. 
Peter's  on  a  festival-day,  sketching  it  with  a  few 
verses  in  his  large  style.  And  doubtless  it  is  the 
scene  of  the  grandest  spectacles  which  the  world  can 
see  in  these  latter  days.  Those  Easter  pomps,  where 
the  antique  world  marches  visibly  before  you  in 
gilded  mail  and  crimson  doubtlet,  refresh  the  eyes, 
and  are  good  so  long  as  they  continue  to  be  merely 
spectacle.  But  if  one  think  for  a  moment  of  the 
servant  of  the  servants  of  the  Lord  in  cloth  of 
gold,  borne  on  men's  shoulders,  or  of  the  children 
receiving  the  blessing  of  their  Holy  Father,  with 
a  regiment  of  French  soldiers  to  protect  the  fa- 
ther from  the  children,  it  becomes  a  little  sad.  If 
one  would  feel  the  full  meaning  of  those  ceremo- 
nials, however,  let  him  consider  the  coincidences 
between  the  Romish  and  the  Buddhist  forms  of 
worship,  and  remembering  that  the  Pope  is  the  di- 
rect heir,  through  the  Pontifex  Maximus,  of  rites 
that  were  ancient  when  the  Etruscans  were  mod- 
ern, he  will  look  with  a  feeling  deeper  than  cu- 
riosity upon  forms  which  record  the  earliest  con- 
quests of  the  Invisible,  the  first  triumphs  of  mind 
over  muscle. 

To  me  the  noon  silence  and  solitude  of  St. 
Peter's  were  most  impressive,  when  the  sunlight, 
made  visible  by  the  mist  of  the  ever-burning  lamps 
in  which  it  was  entangled,  hovered  under  the  dome 


A    FEW  BITS   OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC       201 

like  the  holy  dove  goldenly  descending.  Very 
grand  also  is  the  twilight,  when  all  outlines  melt 
into  mysterious  vastness,  and  the  arches  expand 
and  lose  themselves  in  the  deepening  shadow. 
Then,  standing  in  the  desert  transept,  you  hear 
the  far-off  vespers  swell  and  die  like  low  breath- 
ings of  the  sea  on  some  conjectured  shore. 

As  the  sky  is  supposed  to  scatter  its  golden  star- 
pollen  once  every  year  in  meteoric  showers,  so 
the  dome  of  St.  Peter's  has  its  annual  efflores- 
cence of  fire.  This  illumination  is  the  great  show 
of  Papal  Rome.  Just  after  sunset,  I  stood  upon 
the  Trinita  dei  Monti  and  saw  the  little  drops 
of  pale  light  creeping  downward  from  the  cross 
and  trickling  over  the  dome.  Then,  as  the  sky 
darkened  behind,  it  seemed  as  if  the  setting  sun 
had  lodged  upon  the  horizon  and  there  burned 
out,  the  fire  still  clinging  to  his  massy  ribs.  And 
when  the  change  from  the  silver  to  the  golden 
illumination  came,  it  was  as  if  the  breeze  had 
fanned  the  embers  into  flame  again. 

Bitten  with  the  Anglo-Saxon  gadfly  that  drives 
us  all  to  disenchant  artifice,  and  see  the  springs 
that  fix  it  on,  I  walked  down  to  get  a  nearer 
look.  My  next  glimpse  was  from  the  bridge  of 
Sant'  Angelo  ;  but  there  was  no  time  nor  space 
for  pause.  Foot-passengers  crowding  hither  and 
thither,  as  they  heard  the  shout  of  Avantif  from 
the  mile  of  coachmen  behind,  dragoon-horses  curt- 
sying backward  just  where  there  were  most 
women  and  children  to  be  flattened,  and  the  dome 
drawing  all  eyes  and  thoughts  the  wrong  way, 


202  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

made  a  hubbub  to  be  got  out  of  at  any  desperate 
hazard.  Besides,  one  could  not  help  feeling  ner- 
vously hurried ;  for  it  seemed  quite  plain  to  every- 
body that  this  starry  apparition  must  be  as  mo- 
mentary as  it  was  wonderful,  and  that  we  should 
find  it  vanished  when  we  reached  the  piazza.  But 
suddenly  you  stand  in  front  of  it,  and  see  the  soft 
travertine  of  the  front  suffused  with  a  tremulous, 
glooming  glow,  a  mildened  glory,  as  if  the  building 
breathed,  and  so  transmuted  its  shadow  into  soft 
pulses  of  light. 

After  wondering  long  enough,  I  went  back  to 
the  Pincio,  and  watched  it  for  an  hour  longer. 
But  I  did  not  wish  to  see  it  go  out.  It  seemed 
better  to  go  home  and  leave  it  still  trembling,  so 
that  I  could  fancy  a  kind  of  permanence  in  it,  and 
half  believe  I  should  find  it  there  again  some  lucky 
evening.  Before  leaving  it  altogether,  I  went 
away  to  cool  my  eyes  with  darkness,  and  came 
back  several  times ;  and  every  time  it  was  a  new 
miracle,  the  more  so  that  it  was  a  human  piece  of 
faery-work.  Beautiful  as  fire  is  in  itself,  I  suspect 
that  part  of  the  pleasure  is  metaphysical,  and  that 
the  sense  of  playing  with  an  element  which  can  be 
so  terrible  adds  to  the  zest  of  the  spectacle.  And 
then  fire  is  not  the  least  degraded  by  it,  because  it 
is  not  utilized.  If  beauty  were  in  use,  the  factory 
would  add  a  grace  to  the  river,  and  we  should  turn 
from  the  fire-writing  on  the  wall  of  heaven  to  look 
at  a  message  printed  by  the  magnetic  telegraph* 
There  may  be  a  beauty  in  the  use  itself ;  but  utili- 
zation is  always  downward,  and  it  is  this  feeling 


View  from  the  Pincian 


A    FEW  BITS   OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC       203 

that  makes  Schiller's  Pegasus  in  yoke  so  univer- 
sally pleasing.  So  long  as  the  curse  of  work  clings 
to  man,  he  will  see  beauty  only  in  play.  The  cap- 
ital of  the  most  frugal  commonwealth  in  the  world 
burns  up  five  thousand  dollars  a  year  in  gunpowder, 
and  nobody  murmurs.  Provident  Judas  wished  to 
utilize  the  ointment,  but  the  Teacher  would  rather 
that  it  should  be  wasted  in  poem. 

The  best  lesson  in  aesthetics  I  ever  got  (and, 
like  most  good  lessons,  it  fell  from  the  lips  of  no 
regular  professor)  was  from  an  Irishman  on  the 
day  the  Nymph  Cochituate  was  formally  intro- 
duced to  the  people  of  Boston.  I  made  one  with 
other  rustics  in  the  streets,  admiring  the  digni- 
taries in  coaches  with  as  much  Christian  charity  as 
is  consistent  with  an  elbow  in  the  pit  of  one's 
stomach  and  a  heel  on  that  toe  which  is  your 
only  inheritance  from  two  excellent  grandfathers. 
Among  other  allegorical  phenomena,  there  came 
along  what  I  should  have  called  a  hay-cart,  if  I 
had  not  known  it  was  a  triumphal  car,  filled  with 
that  fairest  variety  of  mortal  grass  which  with  us 
is  apt  to  spindle  so  soon  into  a  somewhat  sapless 
womanhood.  Thirty-odd  young  maidens  in  white 
gowns,  with  blue  sashes  and  pink  wreaths  of  French 
crape,  represented  the  United  States.  (How  shall 
we  limit  our  number,  by  the  way,  if  ever  Utah  be 
admitted  ?)  The  ship,  the  printing-press,  even  the 
wondrous  train  of  express- wagons,  and  other  solid 
bits  of  civic  fantasy,  had  left  my  Hibernian  neigh- 
bor unmoved.  But  this  brought  him  down.  Turn- 
ing to  me,  as  the  most  appreciative  public  for  the 


204  LEA  VES  FR  OM  MY  JO  URN  A  L 

moment,  with  face  of  as  much  delight  as  if  his 
head  had  been  broken,  he  cried,  "  Now  this  is  raly 
beautiful !  Tothally  regyardless  uv  expinse !  " 
Methought  my  shirt-sleeved  lecturer  on  the  Beau- 
tiful had  hit  at  least  one  nail  full  on  the  head. 
Voltaire  but  epigrammatized  the  same  thought 
when  he  said,  Le  superflu,  chose  tres-necessaire. 

As  for  the  ceremonies  of  the  Church,  one  need 
not  waste  time  in  seeing  many  of  them.  There  is 
a  dreary  sameness  in  them,  and  one  can  take  an 
hour  here  and  an  hour  there,  as  it  pleases  him,  just 
as  sure  of  finding  the  same  pattern  as  he  would  be 
in  the  first  or  last  yard  of  a  roll  of  printed  cotton. 
For  myself,  I  do  not  like  to  go  and  look  with 
mere  curiosity  at  what  is  sacred  and  solemn  to 
others.  To  how  many  these  Roman  shows  are 
sacred,  I  cannot  guess  ;  but  certainly  the  Romans 
do  not  value  them  much.  I  walked  out  to  the 
grotto  of  Egeria  on  Easter  Sunday,  that  I  might 
not  be  tempted  down  to  St.  Peter's  to  see  the 
mockery  of  Pio  Nono's  benediction.  It  is  certainly 
Christian,  for  he  blesses  them  that  curse  him,  and 
does  all  the  good  which  the  waving  of  his  fingers 
can  do  to  people  who  would  use  him  despitefully  if 
they  had  the  chance.  I  told  an  Italian  servant 
she  might  have  the  day ;  but  she  said  she  did  not 
care  for  it. 

"  But,"  urged  I,  "  will  you  not  go  to  receive  the 
blessing  of  the  Holy  Father  ?  " 

"  No,  sir." 

"Do  you  not  wish  it?" 


A   FEW  BITS   OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC      205 

"  Not  in  the  least :  his  blessing  would  do  me  no 
good.  If  I  get  the  blessing  of  Heaven,  it  will 
serve  my  turn." 

There  were  three  families  of  foreigners  in  our 
house,  and  I  believe  none  of  the  Italian  servants 
went  to  St.  Peter's  that  day.  Yet  they  commonly 
speak  kindly  of  Pius.  I  have  heard  the  same 
phrase  from  several  Italians  of  the  working-class. 
"  He  is  a  good  man,"  they  said,  "  but  ill-led." 

What  one  sees  in  the  streets  of  Rome  is  worth 
more  than  what  one  sees  in  the  churches.  The 
churches  themselves  are  generally  ugly.  St.  Peter's 
has  crushed  all  the  life  out  of  architectural  genius, 
and  all  the  modern  churches  look  as  if  they  were 
swelling  themselves  in  imitation  of  the  great  Basil- 
ica. There  is  a  clumsy  magnificence  about  them, 
and  their  heaviness  oppresses.  Their  marble  in- 
crustations look  like  a  kind  of  architectural  ele- 
phantiasis, and  the  parts  are  puffy  with  a  dropsical 
want  of  proportion.  There  is  none  of  the  spring 
and  soar  which  one  may  see  even  in  the  Lombard 
churches,  and  a  Roman  column  standing  near  one 
of  them,  slim  and  gentlemanlike,  satirizes  silently 
their  tawdry  parvenuism.  Attempts  at  mere  big- 
ness are  ridiculous  in  a  city  where  the  Colosseum 
still  yawns  in  crater-like  ruin,  and  where  Michael 
Angelo  made  a  noble  church  out  of  a  single  room 
in  Diocletian's  baths. 

Shall  I  confess  it?  Michael  Angelo  seems  to 
me,  in  his  angry  reaction  against  sentimental 
beauty,  to  have  mistaken  bulk  and  brawn  for  the 
antithesis  of  feebleness.  He  is  the  apostle  of  the 


206  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

exaggerated,  the  Victor  Hugo  of  painting  and 
sculpture.  I  have  a  feeling  that  rivalry  was  a 
more  powerful  motive  with  him  than  love  of  art, 
that  he  had  the  conscious  intention  to  be  original, 
which  seldom  leads  to  anything  better  than  being 
extravagant.  The  show  of  muscle  proves  strength, 
not  power ;  and  force  for  mere  force's  sake  in  art 
makes  one  think  of  Milo  caught  in  his  own  log. 
This  is  my  second  thought,  and  strikes  me  as  per- 
haps somewhat  niggardly  toward  one  in  whom  you 
cannot  help  feeling  there  was  so  vast  a  possibility. 
And  then  his  Eve,  his  David,  his  Sibyls,  his 
Prophets,  his  Sonnets !  Well,  I  take  it  all  back, 
and  come  round  to  St.  Peter's  again  just  to  hint 
that  I  doubt  about  domes.  In  Eome  they  are  so 
much  the  fashion  that  I  felt  as  if  they  were  the 
goitre  of  architecture.  Generally  they  look  heavy. 
Those  on  St.  Mark's  in  Venice  are  the  only  light 
ones  I  ever  saw,  and  they  look  almost  airy,  like 
tents  puffed  out  with  wind.  I  suppose  one  must 
be  satisfied  with  the  interior  effect,  which  is  cer- 
tainly noble  in  St.  Peter's.  But  for  impressive- 
ness  both  within  and  without  there  is  nothing  like 
a  Gothic  cathedral  for  me,  nothing  that  crowns  a 
city  so  nobly,  or  makes  such  an  island  of  twilight 
silence  in  the  midst  of  its  noonday  clamors. 

Now  as  to  what  one  sees  in  the  streets,  the  beg- 
gars are  certainly  the  first  things  that  draw  the 
eye.  Beggary  is  an  institution  here.  The  Church 
has  sanctified  it  by  the  establishment  of  mendicant 
orders,  and  indeed  it  is  the  natural  result  of  a 
social  system  where  the  non-producing  class  makes 


A   FEW  BITS   OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC       207 

not  only  the  laws,  but  the  ideas.  The  beggars  of 
Rome  go  far  toward  proving  the  diversity  of  origin 
in  mankind,  for  on  them  surely  the  curse  of  Adam 
never  fell.  It  is  easier  to  fancy  that  Adam  Vau- 
rien,  the  first  tenant  of  the  Fool's  Paradise,  after 
sucking  his  thumbs  for  a  thousand  years,  took  to 
wife  Eve  Faniente,  and  became  the  progenitor  of 
this  race,  to  whom  also  he  left  a  calendar  in  which 
three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days  in  the  year  were 
made  feasts,  sacred  from  all  secular  labor.  Ac- 
cordingly, they  not  merely  do  nothing,  but  they  do 
it  assiduously  and  almost  with  religious  fervor.  I 
have  seen  ancient  members  of  this  sect  as  constant 
at  their  accustomed  street-corner  as  the  bit  of 
broken  column  on  which  they  sat ;  and  when  a  man 
does  this  in  rainy  weather,  as  rainy  weather  is  in 
Rome,  he  has  the  spirit  of  a  fanatic  and  martyr. 

It  is  not  that  the  Italians  are  a  lazy  people.  On 
the  contrary,  I  am  satisfied  that  they  are  industri- 
ous so  far  as  they  are  allowed  to  be.  But,  as  I 
said  before,  when  a  Roman  does  nothing,  he  does 
it  in  the  high  Roman  fashion.  A  friend  of  mine 
was  having  one  of  his  rooms  arranged  for  a  private 
theatre,  and  sent  for  a  person  who  was  said  to  be 
an  expert  in  the  business  to  do  it  for  him.  After 
a  day's  trial,  he  was  satisfied  that  his  lieutenant 
was  rather  a  hindrance  than  a  help,  and  resolved 
to  dismiss  him. 

"  What  is  your  charge  for  your  day's  services  ?  " 

"  Two  scudi,  sir." 

"  Two  scudi !  Five  pauls  would  be  too  much. 
You  have  done  nothing  but  stand  with  your  hands 


208  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

in  your  pockets  aiid  get  in  the  way  of  other 
people." 

"  Lordship  is  perfectly  right ;  but  that  is  my 
way  of  working." 

It  is  impossible  for  a  stranger  to  say  who  may 
not  beg  in  Rome.  It  seems  to  be  a  sudden  mad- 
ness that  may  seize  any  one  at  the  sight  of  a  for- 
eigner. You  see  a  very  respectable-looking  per- 
son in  the  street,  and  it  is  odds  but,  as  you  pass 
him,  his  hat  comes  off,  his  whole  figure  suddenly 
dilapidates  itself,  assuming  a  tremble  of  profes- 
sional weakness,  and  you  hear  the  everlasting 
qualche  cosaper  carita  !  You  are  in  doubt  whether 
to  drop  a  bajoccho  into  the  next  cardinal's  hat 
which  offers  you  its  sacred  cavity  in  answer  to  your 
salute.  You  begin  to  believe  that  the  hat  was  in- 
vented for  the  sole  purpose  of  ingulfing  coppers, 
and  that  its  highest  type  is  the  great  Triregno  it- 
self, into  which  the  pence  of  Peter  rattle. 

But  you  soon  learn  to  distinguish  the  established 
beggars,  and  to  the  three  professions  elsewhere  con- 
sidered liberal  you  add  a  fourth  for  this  latitude, — 
mendicancy.  Its  professors  look  upon  themselves 
as  a  kind  of  guild  which  ought  to  be  protected  by 
the  government.  I  fell  into  talk  with  a  woman 
who  begged  of  me  in  the  Colosseum.  Among 
other  things  she  complained  that  the  government 
did  not  at  all  consider  the  poor. 

"  Where  is  the  government  that  does  ?  "  I  said. 

"  Eh  gla  !  Excellency ;  but  this  government  lets 
beggars  from  the  country  come  into  Rome,  which 
is  a  great  injury  to  the  trade  of  us  born  Romans. 


A   FEW  BITS   OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC       209 

There  is  Beppo,  for  example ;  he  is  a  man  of  prop- 
erty in  his  own  town,  and  has  a  dinner  of  three 
courses  every  day.  He  has  portioned  two  daugh- 
ters with  three  thousand  scudi  each,  and  left  Koine 
during  the  time  of  the  Republic  with  the  rest  of 
the  nobility." 

At  first,  one  is  shocked  and  pained  at  the  exhi- 
bition of  deformities  in  the  street.  But  by  and  by 
he  comes  to  look  upon  them  with  little  more  emo- 
tion than  is  excited  by  seeing  the  tools  of  any 
other  trade.  The  melancholy  of  the  beggars  is 
purely  a  matter  of  business ;  and  they  look  upon 
their  maims  as  Fortunatus  purses,  which  will  al- 
ways give  them  money.  A  withered  arm  they 
present  to  you  as  a  highwayman  would  his  pistol ; 
a  goitre  is  a  life-annuity  ;  a  St.  Vitus  dance  is  as 
good  as  an  engagement  as  prima  ballerina  at  the 
Apollo ;  and  to  have  no  legs  at  all  is  to  stand  on 
the  best  footing  with  fortune.  They  are  a  merry 
race,  on  the  whole,  and  quick-witted,  like  the  rest 
of  their  countrymen.  I  believe  the  regular  fee  for 
a  beggar  is  a  quattrino,  about  a  quarter  of  a  cent ; 
but  they  expect  more  of  foreigners.  A  friend  of 
mine  once  gave  one  of  these  tiny  coins  to  an  old 
woman ;  she  delicately  expressed  her  resentment 
by  exclaiming,  "  Thanks,  signoria.  God  will  re- 
ward even  you !  " 

A  begging  friar  came  to  me  one  day  with  a  sub- 
scription for  repairing  his  convent.  "  Ah,  but  I 
am  a  heretic,"  said  I.  "  Undoubtedly,"  with  a 
shrug,  implying  a  respectful  acknowledgment  of  a 
foreigner's  right  to  choose  warm  and  dry  lodgings 


210  LEAVES   FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

in  the  other  world  as  well  as  in  this,  "but  your 
money  is  perfectly  orthodox." 

Another  favorite  way  of  doing  nothing  is  to  exca- 
vate the  Forum.  I  think  the  Fanientes  like  this  all 
the  better,  because  it  seems  a  kind  of  satire  upon 
work,  as  the  witches  parody  the  Christian  offices  of 
devotion  at  their  Sabbath.  A  score  or  so  of  old 
men  in  voluminous  cloaks  shift  the  earth  from  one 
side  of  a  large  pit  to  the  other,  in  a  manner  so  lei- 
surely that  it  is  positive  repose  to  look  at  them. 
The  most  bigoted  anti-Fourierist  might  acknow- 
ledge this  to  be  attractive  industry. 

One  conscript  father  trails  a  small  barrow  up 
to  another,  who  stands  leaning  on  a  long  spade. 
Arriving,  he  fumbles  for  his  snuff-box,  and  offers 
it  deliberately  to  his  friend.  Each  takes  an  ample 
pinch,  and  both  seat  themselves  to  await  the  result. 
If  one  should  sneeze,  he  receives  the  Felicita  !  of 
the  other  ;  and,  after  allowing  the  titillation  to  sub- 
side, he  replies,  Grazial  Then  follows  a  little 
conversation,  and  then  they  prepare  to  load.  But 
it  occurs  to  the  barrow-driver  that  this  is  a  good 
opportunity  to  fill  and  light  his  pipe  ;  and  to  do  so 
conveniently  he  needs  his  barrow  to  sit  upon.  He 
draws  a  few  whiffs,  and  a  little  more  conversation 
takes  place.  The  barrow  is  now  ready  ;  but  first 
the  wielder  of  the  spade  will  fill  his  pipe  also. 
This  done,  more  whiffs  and  more  conversation. 
Then  a  spoonful  of  earth  is  thrown  into  the  bar- 
row, and  it  starts  on  its  return.  But  midway  it 
meets  an  empty  barrow,  and  both  stop  to  go 
through  the  snuff-box  ceremonial  once  more,  and 


A   FEW  BITS   OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC      211 

to  discuss  whatever  new  thing  has  occurred  in  the 
excavation  since  their  last  encounter.  And  so  it 
goes  on  all  day. 

As  I  see  more  of  material  antiquity,  I  begin  to 
suspect  that  my  interest  in  it  is  mostly  factitious. 
The  relations  of  races  to  the  physical  world  (only  to 
be  studied  fruitfully  on  the  spot)  do  not  excite  in 
me  an  interest  at  all  proportionate  to  that  I  feel  in 
their  influence  on  the  moral  advance  of  mankind, 
which  one  may  as  easily  trace  in  his  own  library  as 
on  the  spot.  The  only  useful  remark  I  remember 
to  have  made  here  is,  that,  the  situation  of  Rome 
being  far  less  strong  than  that  of  any  city  of  the 
Etruscan  league,  it  must  have  been  built  where  it 
is  for  purposes  of  commerce.  It  is  the  most  de- 
fensible point  near  the  mouth  of  the  Tiber.  It  is 
only  as  rival  trades-folk  that  Rome  and  Carthage 
had  any  comprehensible  cause  of  quarrel.  It  is 
only  as  a  commercial  people  that  we  can  under- 
stand the  early  tendency  of  the  Romans  towards 
democracy.  As  for  antiquity,  after  reading  his- 
tory, one  is  haunted  by  a  discomforting  suspicion 
that  the  names  so  painfully  deciphered  in  hiero- 
glyphic or  arrow-head  inscriptions  are  only  so 
many  more  Smiths  and  Browns  masking  it  in  un- 
known tongues.  Moreover,  if  we  Yankees  are 
twitted  with  not  knowing  the  difference  between 
big  and  great,  may  not  those  of  us  who  have 
learned  it  turn  round  on  many  a  monument  over 
here  with  the  same  reproach  ?  I  confess  I  am  be- 
ginning to  sympathize  with  a  countryman  of  ours 


212  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

from  Michigan,  who  asked  our  Minister  to  direct 
him  to  a  specimen  ruin  and  a  specimen  gallery, 
that  he  might  see  and  be  rid  of  them  once  for  all. 
I  saw  three  young  Englishmen  going  through  the 
Vatican  by  catalogue  and  number,  the  other  day, 
in  a  fashion  which  John  Bull  is  apt  to  consider 
exclusively  American.  "  Number  300  !  "  says  the 
one  with  catalogue  and  pencil,  "  have  you  seen 
it?"  "Yes,"  answer  his  two  comrades,  and, 
checking  it  off,  he  goes  on  with  Number  301. 
Having  witnessed  the  unavailing  agonies  of  many 
Anglo-Saxons  from  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  in 
their  effort  to  have  the  correct  sensation  before 
many  hideous  examples  of  antique  bad  taste,  my 
heart  warmed  toward  my  business-like  British 
cousins,  who  were  doing  their  aesthetics  in  this 
thrifty  auctioneer  fashion.  Our  cart-before-horse 
education,  which  makes  us  more  familiar  with  the 
history  and  literature  of  Greeks  and  Romans  than 
with  those  of  our  own  ancestry,  (though  there  is 
nothing  in  ancient  art  to  match  Shakespeare  or  a 
Gothic  minster,)  makes  us  the  gulls  of  what  we 
call  classical  antiquity.  Europe  were  worth  visit- 
ing, if  only  to  be  rid  of  this  one  old  man  of  the 
sea.  In  sculpture,  to  be  sure,  they  have  us  on  the 
hip. 

I  am  not  ashamed  to  confess  a  singular  sympathy 
with  what  are  known  as  the  Middle  Ages.  I  can- 
not help  thinking  that  few  periods  have  left  be- 
hind them  such  traces  of  inventiveness  and  power. 
Nothing  is  more  tiresome  than  the  sameness  of 
modern  cities ;  and  it  has  often  struck  me  that  this 


A   FEW  BITS  OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC      213 

must  also  have  been  true  of  those  ancient  ones  in 
which  Greek  architecture  or  its  derivatives  pre- 
vailed, —  true  at  least  as  respects  public  buildings. 
But  medieval  towns,  especially  in  Italy,  even  when 
only  fifty  miles  asunder,  have  an  individuality  of 
character  as  marked  as  that  of  trees.  Nor  is  it 
merely  this  originality  that  attracts  me,  but  like- 
wise the  sense  that,  however  old,  they  are  nearer  to 
me  in  being  modern  and  Christian.  Far  enough 
away  in  the  past  to  be  picturesque,  they  are  still  so 
near  through  sympathies  of  thought  and  belief  as 
to  be  more  companionable.  I  find  it  harder  to 
bridge  over  the  gulf  of  Paganism  than  of  centuries. 
Apart  from  any  difference  in  the  men,  I  had  a  far 
deeper  emotion  when  I  stood  on  the  /Sasso  di  Dante, 
than  at  Horace's  Sabine  farm  or  by  the  tomb  of 
Virgil.  The  latter,  indeed,  interested  me  chiefly 
by  its  association  with  comparatively  modern  le- 
gend ;  and  one  of  the  buildings  I  am  most  glad  to 
have  seen  in  Rome  is  the  Bear  Inn,  where  Mon- 
taigne lodged  on  his  arrival. 

I  think  it  must  have  been  for  some  such  reason 
that  I  liked  my  Florentine  better  than  my  Roman 
walks,  though  I  am  vastly  more  contented  with 
merely  being  in  Rome.  Florence  is  more  noisy ; 
indeed,  I  think  it  the  noisiest  town  I  was  ever  in. 
What  with  the  continual  jangling  of  its  bells,  the 
rattle  of  Austrian  drums,  and  the  street-cries,  An- 
cora  mi  raccapriccia.  The  Italians  are  a  voci- 
ferous people,  and  most  so  among  them  the  Flor- 
entines. Walking  through  a  back  street  one  day, 
I  saw  an  old  woman  higgling  with  a  peripatetic 


214  LEA  VES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

dealer,  who,  at  every  interval  afforded  him  by  the 
remarks  of  his  veteran  antagonist,  would  tip  his 
head  on  one  side,  and  shout,  with  a  kind  of  wonder- 
ing enthusiasm,  as  if  he  could  hardly  trust  the 
evidence  of  his  own  senses  to  such  loveliness,  O, 
eke  bellezza  I  che  belle-e-ezza  !  The  two  had  been 
contending  as  obstinately  as  the  Greeks  and  Tro- 
jans over  the  body  of  Patroclus,  and  I  was  curious 
to  know  what  was  the  object  of  so  much  desire 
on  the  one  side  and  admiration  on  the  other.  It 
was  a  half-dozen  of  weazeny  baked  pears,  beg- 
garly remnant  of  the  day's  traffic.  Another  time 
I  stopped  before  a  stall,  debating  whether  to  buy 
some  fine-looking  peaches.  Before  I  had  made  up 
my  mind,  the  vender,  a  stout  fellow,  with  a  voice 
like  a  prize-bull  of  Bashan,  opened  a  mouth  round 
and  large  as  the  muzzle  of  a  blunderbuss,  and  let 
fly  into  my  ear  the  following  pertinent  observation : 
"Belle  pesche!  belle  pe-e-eschef"  (crescendo.*)  I 
stared  at  him  in  stunned  bewilderment ;  but,  seeing 
that  he  had  reloaded  and  was  about  to  fire  again, 
took  to  my  heels,  the  exploded  syllables  rattling 
after  me  like  so  many  buckshot.  A  single  turnip  is 
argument  enough  with  them  till  midnight ;  nay,  I 
have  heard  a  ruffian  yelling  over  a  covered  basket, 
which,  I  am  convinced,  was  empty,  and  only  carried 
as  an  excuse  for  his  stupendous  vocalism.  It  never 
struck  me  before  what  a  quiet  people  Americans 
are. 

Of  the  pleasant  places  within  easy  walk  of 
Eome,  I  prefer  the  garden  of  the  Villa  Albani,  as 
being  most  Italian.  One  does  not  go  to  Italy  for 


A    FEW  BITS   OF  ROMAN   MOSAIC       215 

examples  of  Price  on  the  Picturesque.  Compared 
with  landscape-gardening,  it  is  Racine  to  Shake- 
speare, I  grant ;  but  it  has  its  own  charm,  neverthe- 
less. I  like  the  balustraded  terraces,  the  sun-proof 
laurel  walks,  the  vases  and  statues.  It  is  only  in 
such  a  climate  that  it  does  not  seem  inhuman  to 
thrust  a  naked  statue  out  of  doors.  Not  to  speak 
of  their  incongruity,  how  dreary  do  those  white 
figures  look  at  Fountains  Abbey  in  that  shrewd 
Yorkshire  atmosphere !  To  put  them  there  shows 
the  same  bad  taste  that  led  Prince  Polonia,  as 
Thackeray  calls  him,  to  build  an  artificial  ruin 
within  a  mile  of  Rome.  But  I  doubt  if  the  Italian 
garden  will  bear  transplantation.  Farther  north, 
or  under  a  less  constant  sunshine,  it  is  but  half- 
hardy  at  the  best.  Within  the  city,  the  garden  of 
the  French  Academy  is  my  favorite  retreat,  because 
little  frequented ;  and  there  is  an  arbor  there  in 
which  I  have  read  comfortably  (sitting  where  the 
sun  could  reach  me)  in  January.  By  the  way, 
there  is  something  very  agreeable  in  the  way  these 
people  have  of  making  a  kind  of  fireside  of  the 
sunshine.  With  us  it  is  either  too  hot  or  too  cool, 
or  we  are  too  busy.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  they 
have  no  such  thing  as  a  chimney-corner. 

Of  course  I  haunt  the  collections  of  art  faith- 
fully ,•  but  my  favorite  gallery,  after  all,  is  the 
street.  There  I  always  find  something  entertain- 
ing, at  least.  The  other  day,  on  my  way  to  the 
Colonna  Palace,  I  passed  the  Fountain  of  Trevi, 
from  which  the  water  is  now  shut  off  on  account  of 
repairs  to  the  aqueduct.  A  scanty  rill  of  soap- 


216  LEAVES  FROM  MY  JOURNAL 

sudsy  liquid  still  trickled  from  one  of  the  conduits, 
and,  seeing  a  crowd,  I  stopped  to  find  out  what 
nothing  or  other  had  gathered  it.  One  charm  of 
Rome  is  that  nobody  has  anything  in  particular  to 
do,  or,  if  he  has,  can  always  stop  doing  it  on  the 
slightest  pretext.  I  found  that  some  eels  had  been 
discovered,  and  a  very  vivacious  hunt  was  going 
on,  the  chief  Mmrods  being  boys.  I  happened  to 
be  the  first  to  see  a  huge  eel  wriggling  from  the 
mouth  of  a  pipe,  and  pointed  him  out.  Two  lads 
at  once  rushed  upon  him.  One  essayed  the  cap- 
ture with  his  naked  hands,  the  other,  more  provi- 
dent, had  armed  himself  with  a  rag  of  woollen 
cloth  with  which  to  maintain  his  grip  more  se- 
curely. Hardly  had  this  latter  arrested  his  slip- 
pery prize,  when  a  ragged  rascal,  watching  his  op- 
portunity, snatched  it  away,  and  instantly  secured 
it  by  thrusting  the  head  into  his  mouth,  and  clos- 
ing on  it  a  set  of  teeth  like  an  ivory  vice.  But 
alas  for  ill-got  gain  !  Rob  Roy's 

"Good  old  plan, 

That  he  should  take  who  has  the  power, 
And  he  should  keep  who  can," 

did  not  serve  here.  There  is  scarce  a  square  rood 
in  Rome  without  one  or  more  stately  cocked  hats 
in  it,  emblems  of  authority  and  police.  I  saw 
the  flash  of  the  snow-white  cross-belts,  gleaming 
through  that  dingy  crowd  like  the  panache  of 
Henri  Quatre  at  Ivry,  I  saw  the  mad  plunge  of  the 
canvas-shielded  head-piece,  sacred  and  terrible  as 
that  of  Gessler ;  and  while  the  greedy  throng  were 
dancing  about  the  anguilliceps,  each  taking  his 


A    FEW  BITS  OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC      217 

chance  twitch  at  the  undulating  object  of  all  wishes, 
the  captor  dodging  his  head  hither  and  thither, 
(vulnerable,  like  Achilles,  only  in  his  'eel,  as  a 
Cockney  tourist  would  say,)  a  pair  of  broad  blue 
shoulders  parted  the  assailants  as  a  ship's  bows  part 
a  wave,  a  pair  of  blue  arms,  terminating  in  gloves 
of  Berlin  thread,  were  stretched  forth,  not  in  bene- 
diction, one  hand  grasped  the  slippery  Briseis  by 
the  waist,  the  other  bestowed  a  cuff  on  the  jaw-bone 
of  Achilles,  which  loosened  (rather  by  its  author- 
ity than  its  physical  force)  the  hitherto  refractory 
incisors,  a  snuffy  bandanna  was  produced,  the  pris- 
oner was  deposited  in  this  temporary  watch-house, 
and  the  cocked  hat  sailed  majestically  away  with 
the  property  thus  sequestered  for  the  benefit  of  the 
state. 

"  Gaudeant  anguillse  si  mortuus  sit  homo  ille, 
Qui,  quasi  morte  reas,  excruciabat  eas !  " 

If  you  have  got  through  that  last  sentence  with- 
out stopping  for  breath,  you  are  fit  to  begin  on  the 
Homer  of  Chapman,  who,  both  as  translator  and 
author,  has  the  longest  wind,  (especially  for  a  com- 
parison,) without  being  long-winded,  of  all  writers 
I  know  anything  of,  not  excepting  Jeremy  Taylor. 


KEATS 

1854 

THERE  are  few  poets  whose  works  contain  slighter 
hints  of  their  personal  history  than  those  of  Keats ; 
yet  there  are,  perhaps,  even  fewer  whose  real  lives, 
or  rather  the  conditions  upon  which  they  lived,  are 
more  clearly  traceable  in  what  they  have  written. 
To  write  the  life  of  a  man  was  formerly  understood 
to  mean  the  cataloguing  and  placing  of  circum- 
stances, of  those  things  which  stood  about  the  life 
and  were  more  or  less  related  to  it,  but  were  not 
the  life  itself.  But  Biography  from  day  to  day 
holds  dates  cheaper  and  facts  dearer.  A  man's 
life,  so  far  as  its  outward  events  are  concerned, 
may  be  made  for  him,  as  his  clothes  are  by  the 
tailor,  of  this  cut  or  that,  of  finer  or  coarser  mate- 
rial ;  but  the  gait  and  gesture  show  through,  and 
give  to  trappings,  in  themselves  characterless,  an 
individuality  that  belongs  to  the  man  himself.  It 
is  those  essential  facts  which  underlie  the  life  and 
make  the  individual  man  that  are  of  importance, 
and  it  is  the  cropping  out  of  these  upon  the  sur- 
face that  gives  us  indications  by  which  to  judge  of 
the  true  nature  hidden  below.  Every  man  has  his 
block  given  him,  and  the  figure  he  cuts  will  depend 
very  much  upon  the  shape  of  that,  —  upon  the 


KEATS  219 

knots  and  twists  which  existed  in  it  from  the  be- 
ginning. We  were  designed  in  the  cradle,  perhaps 
earlier,  and  it  is  in  finding  out  this  design,  and 
shaping  ourselves  to  it,  that  our  years  are  spent 
wisely.  It  is  the  vain  endeavor  to  make  ourselves 
what  we  are  not  that  has  strewn  history  with  so 
many  broken  purposes  and  lives  left  in  the  rough. 

Keats  hardly  lived  long  enough  to  develop  a 
well-outlined  character,  for  that  results  commonly 
from  the  resistance  made  by  temperament  to  the 
many  influences  by  which  the  world,  as  it  may  hap- 
pen then  to  be,  endeavors  to  mould  every  one  in 
its  own  image.  What  his  temperament  was  we 
can  see  clearly,  and  also  that  it  subordinated  itself 
more  and  more  to  the  discipline  of  art. 

JOHN  KEATS,  the  second  of  four  children,  like 
Chaucer  and  Spenser,  was  a  Londoner,  but,  unlike 
them,  he  was  certainly  not  of  gentle  blood.  Lord 
Houghton,  who  seems  to  have  had  a  kindly  wish  to 
create  him  gentleman  by  brevet,  says  that  he  was 
"  born  in  the  upper  ranks  of  the  middle  class." 
This  shows  a  commendable  tenderness  for  the 
nerves  of  English  society,  and  reminds  one  of 
Northcote's  story  of  the  violin-player  who,  wishing 
to  compliment  his  pupil,  George  III.,  divided  all 
fiddlers  into  three  classes,  —  those  who  could  not 
play  at  all,  those  who  played  very  badly,  and  those 
who  played  very  well,  —  assuring  his  Majesty  that 
he  had  made  such  commendable  progress  as  to 
have  already  reached  the  second  rank.  We  shall 
not  be  too  greatly  shocked  by  knowing  that  the 


220  KEATS 

father  of  Keats  (as  Lord  Houghton  had  told  us  in 
an  earlier  biography)  "  was  employed  in  the  estab- 
lishment of  Mr.  Jennings,  the  proprietor  of  large 
livery-stables  on  the  Pavement  in  Moorfields,  nearly 
opposite  the  entrance  into  Finsbury  Circus."  So 
that,  after  all,  it  was  not  so  bad;  for,  first,  Mr.' 
Jennings  was  a  proprietor ;  second,  he  was  the 
proprietor  of  an  establishment ;  third,  he  was  the 
proprietor  of  a  large  establishment;  and  fourth, 
this  large  establishment  was  nearly  opposite  Fins- 
bury  Circus,  —  a  name  which  vaguely  dilates  the 
imagination  with  all  sorts  of  potential  grandeurs. 
It  is  true  Leigh  Hunt  asserts  that  Keats  "  was  a 
little  too  sensitive  on  the  score  of  his  origin,"  1  but 
we  can  find  no  trace  of  such  a  feeling  either  in  his 
poetry  or  in  such  of  his  letters  as  have  been  printed. 
We  suspect  the  fact  to  have  been  that  he  resented 
with  becoming  pride  the  vulgar  Blackwood  and 
Quarterly  standard,  which  measured  genius  by 
genealogies.  It  is  enough  that  his  poetical  pedi- 
gree is  of  the  best,  tracing  through  Spenser  to 
Chaucer,  and  that  Pegasus  does  not  stand  at  livery 
even  in  the  largest  establishments  in  Moorfields. 

As  well  as  we  can  make  out,  then,  the  father  of 
Keats  was  a  groom  in  the  service  of  Mr.  Jennings, 
and  married  the  daughter  of  his  master.  Thus,  on 
the  mother's  side,  at  least,  we  find  a  grandfather ; 
on  the  father's  there  is  no  hint  of  such  an  ancestor, 
and  we  must  charitably  take  him  for  granted.  It 
is  of  more  importance  that  the  elder  Keats  was  a 
man  of  sense  and  energy,  and  that  his  wife  was  a 
1  Hunt's  Autobiography  (Am.  ed.),  vol.  ii.  p.  36. 


KEATS  221 

"lively  and  intelligent  woman,  who  hastened  the 
birth  of  the  poet  by  her  passionate  love  of  amuse- 
ment," bringing  him  into  the  world,  a  seven-months' 
child,  on  the  29th  October,  1795,  instead  of  the 
29th  of  December,  as  would  have  been  conven- 
tionally proper.  Lord  Houghton  describes  her  as 
"  tall,  with  a  large  oval  face,  and  a  somewhat  sat- 
urnine demeanour."  This  last  circumstance  does 
not  agree  very  well  with  what  he  had  just  before 
told  us  of  her  liveliness,  but  he  consoles  us  by  add- 
ing that  "  she  succeeded,  however,  in  inspiring  her 
children  with  the  profoundest  affection."  This 
was  particularly  true  of  John,  who  once,  when  be- 
tween four  and  five  years  old,  mounted  guard  at 
her  chamber  door  with  an  old  sword,  when  she  was 
ill  and  the  doctor  had  ordered  her  not  to  be  dis- 
turbed.1 

In  1804,  Keats  being  in  his  ninth  year,  his  father 
was  killed  by  a  fall  from  his  horse.  His  mother 
seems  to  have  been  ambitious  for  her  children,  and 
there  was  some  talk  of  sending  John  to  Harrow. 
Fortunately  this  plan  was  thought  too  expensive, 
and  he  was  sent  instead  to  the  school  of  Mr.  Clarke 
at  Enfield  with  his  brothers.  A  maternal  uncle, 
who  had  distinguished  himself  by  his  courage 
under  Duncan  at  Camperdown,  was  the  hero  of  his 
nephews,  and  they  went  to  school  resolved  to  main- 
tain the  family  reputation  for  courage.  John  was 
always  fighting,  and  was  chiefly  noted  among  his 
school-fellows  as  a  strange  compound  of  pluck  and 

1  Haydon  tells  the  story  differently,  but  I  think  Lord  Hough- 
ton's  version  the  best. 


222  KEA  TS 

sensibility.  He  attacked  an  usher  who  had  boxed 
his  brother's  ears ;  and  when  his  mother  died,  in 
1810,  was  moodily  inconsolable,  hiding  himself  for 
several  days  in  a  nook  under  the  master's  desk, 
and  refusing  all  comfort  from  teacher  or  friend. 

He  was  popular  at  school,  as  boys  of  spirit  al- 
ways are,  and  impressed  his  companions  with  a 
sense  of  his  power.  They  thought  he  would  one 
day  be  a  famous  soldier.  This  may  have  been 
owing  to  the  stories  he  told  them  of  the  heroic 
uncle,  whose  deeds,  we  may  be  sure,  were  properly 
f amoused  by  the  boy  Homer,  and  whom  they  prob- 
ably took  for  an  admiral  at  the  least,  as  it  would 
have  been  well  for  Keats's  literary  prosperity  if  he 
had  been.  At  any  rate,  they  thought  John  would 
be  a  great  man,  which  is  the  main  thing,  for  the 
public  opinion  of  the  playground  is  truer  and  more 
discerning  than  that  of  the  world,  and  if  you  tell 
us  what  the  boy  was,  we  will  tell  you  what  the  man 
longs  to  be,  however  he  may  be  repressed  by  neces- 
sity or  fear  of  the  police  reports. 

Lord  Houghton  has  failed  to  discover  anything 
else  especially  worthy  of  record  in  the  school-life 
of  Keats.  He  translated  the  twelve  books  of  the 
JEneid,  read  Robinson  Crusoe  and  the  Incas  of 
Peru,  and  looked  into  Shakespeare.  He  left  school 
in  1810,  with  little  Latin  and  no  Greek,  but  he 
had  studied  Spence's  Polymetis,  Tooke's  Pantheon, 
and  Lempriere's  Dictionary,  and  knew  gods, 
nymphs,  and  heroes,  which  were  quite  as  good  com- 
pany perhaps  for  him  as  aorists  and  aspirates.  It 
is  pleasant  to  fancy  the  horror  of  those  respectable 


KEATS  223 

writers  if  their  pages  could  suddenly  have  become 
alive  under  their  pens  with  all  that  the  young  poet 
saw  in  them.1 

On  leaving  school  he  was  apprenticed  for  five 
years  to  a  surgeon  at  Edmonton.  His  master  was 
a  Mr.  Hammond,  "  of  some  eminence  "  in  his  pro- 
fession, as  Lord  Houghton  takes  care  to  assure  us. 
The  place  was  of  more  importance  than  the  master, 
for  its  neighborhood  to  Enfield  enabled  him  to 
keep  up  his  intimacy  with  the  family  of  his  former 
teacher,  Mr.  Clarke,  and  to  borrow  books  of  them. 
In  1812,  when  he  was  in  his  jeventeenth  year,  Mr. 
Charles  Cowden  Clarke  lent  him  the  "  Faerie 
Queene."  Nothing  that  is  told  of  Orpheus  or  Am- 
phion  is  more  wonderful  than  this  miracle  of  Spen- 
ser's, transforming  a  surgeon's  apprentice  into  a 
great  poet.  Keats  learned  at  once  the  secret  of 

1  There  is  always  some  one  willing  to  make  himself  a  sort  of 
accessary  after  the  fact  in  any  success ;  always  an  old  woman  or 
two,  ready  to  remember  omens  of  all  quantities  and  qualities  in 
the  childhood  of  persons  who  have  become  distinguished.  Ac- 
cordingly, a  certain  "Mrs.  Grafty,  of  Craven  Street,  Finsbury," 
assures  Mr.  George  Keats,  when  he  tells  her  that  John  is  deter- 
mined to  be  a  poet,  "that  this  was  very  odd,  because  when  he 
could  just  speak,  instead  of  answering  questions  put  to  him,  he 
would  always  make  a  rhyme  to  the  last  word  people  said,  and 
then  laugh."  The  early  histories  of  heroes,  like  those  of  nations, 
are  always  more  or  less  mythical,  and  I  give  the  story  for  what  it 
is  worth.  Doubtless  there  is  a  gleam  of  intelligence  in  it,  for  the 
old  lady  pronounces  it  odd  that  any  one  should  determine  to  be  a 
poet,  and  seems  to  have  wished  to  hint  that  the  matter  was  deter- 
mined earlier  and  by  a  higher  disposing  power.  There  are  few 
children  who  do  not  soon  discover  the  charm  of  rhyme,  and  per- 
haps fewer  who  can  resist  making  fun  of  the  Mrs.  Graftys  of 
Craven  Street,  Finsbury,  when  they  have  the  chance.  See  Hay- 
don's  Autobiography,  vol.  i.  p.  361. 


224  KEA  TS 

his  birth,  and  henceforward  his  indentures  ran  to 
Apollo  instead  of  Mr.  Hammond.  Thus  could  the 
Muse  defend  her  son.  It  is  the  old  story,  —  the 
lost  heir  discovered  by  his  aptitude  for  what  is 
gentle  and  knightly.  Hay  don  tells  us  "  that  he 
used  sometimes  to  say  to  his  brother  he  feared 
he  should  never  be  a  poet,  and  if  he  was  not  he 
would  destroy  himself."  This  was  perhaps  a  half- 
conscious  reminiscence  of  Chatterton,  with  whose 
genius  and  fate  he  had  an  intense  sympathy,  it 
may  be  from  an  inward  foreboding  of  the  shortness 
of  his  own  career.1 

Before  long  we  find  him  studying  Chaucer,  then 
Shakespeare,  and  afterward  Milton.  But  Chap- 
man's translations  had  a  more  abiding  influence 
on  his  style  both  for  good  and  evil.  That  he  read 
wisely,  his  comments  on  the  "  Paradise  Lost "  are 
enough  to  prove.  He  now  also  commenced  poet 
himself,  but  does  not  appear  to  have  neglected  the 
study  of  his  profession.  He  was  a  youth  of  energy 
and  purpose,  and,  though  he  no  doubt  penned  many 
a  stanza  when  he  should  have  been  anatomizing, 
and  walked  the  hospitals  accompanied  by  the  early 
gods,  nevertheless  passed  a  very  creditable  exami- 
nation in  1817.  In  the  spring  of  this  year,  also, 
he  prepared  to  take  his  first  degree  as  poet,  and 
accordingly  published  a  small  volume  containing  a 
selection  of  his  earlier  essays  in  verse.  It  attracted 

"I  never  saw  the  poet  Keats  but  once,  but  he  then  read 
some  lines  from  (I  think)  the  'Bristowe  Tragedy'  with  an  en- 
thusiasm of  admiration  such  as  could  be  felt  only  by  a  poet,  and 
which  true  poetry  only  could  have  excited."  — J.  H.  C.,  in  Notes 
jj-  Queries,  4th  s.  x.  157. 


KEATS  225 

little  attention,  and  the  rest  of  this  year  seems  to. 
have  been  occupied  with  a  journey  on  foot  in  Scot- 
land, and  the  composition  of  "  Endymion,"  which 
was  published  in  1818.  Milton's  "  Tetrachordon  " 
was  not  better  abused;  but  Milton's  assailants 
were  unorganized,  and  were  obliged  each  to  print 
and  pay  for  his  own  dingy  little  quarto,  trusting  to 
the  natural  laws  of  demand  and  supply  to  furnish 
him  with  readers.  Keats  was  arraigned  by  the 
constituted  authorities  of  literary  justice.  They 
might  be,  nay,  they  were  Jeffrieses  and  Scroggses, 
but  the  sentence  was  published,  and  the  penalty 
inflicted  before  all  England.  The  difference  be- 
tween his  fortune  and  Milton's  was  that  between 
being  pelted  by  a  mob  of  personal  enemies  and 
being  set  in  the  pillory.  In  the  first  case,  the  an- 
noyance brushes  off  mostly  with  the  mud ;  in  the 
last,  there  is  no  solace  but  the  consciousness  of 
suffering  in  a  great  cause.  This  solace,  to  a  cer- 
tain extent,  Keats  had ;  for  his  ambition  was 
noble,  and  he  hoped  not  to  make  a  great  reputa- 
tion, but  to  be  a  great  poet.  Haydon  says  that 
Wordsworth  and  Keats  were  the  only  men  he  had 
ever  seen  who  looked  conscious  of  a  lofty  purpose. 
It  is  curious  that  men  should  resent  more  fiercely 
what  they  suspect  to  be  good  verses  than  what 
they  know  to  be  bad  morals.  Is  it  because  they 
feel  themselves  incapable  of  the  one  and  not  of  the 
other  ?  Probably  a  certain  amount  of  honest  loyalty 
to  old  idols  in  danger  of  dethronement  is  to  be 
taken  into  account,  and  quite  as  much  of  the  cru- 
elty of  criticism  is  due  to  want  of  thought  as  to 


226  KEA  TS 

deliberate  injustice.  However  it  be,  the  best  poetry 
has  been  the  most  savagely  attacked,  and  men  who 
scrupulously  practised  the  Ten  Commandments  as 
if  there  were  never  a  not  in  any  of  them,  felt  every 
sentiment  of  their  better  nature  outraged  by  the 
"  Lyrical  Ballads."  It  is  idle  to  attempt  to  show 
that  Keats  did  not  suffer  keenly  from  the  vulgari- 
ties of  Bkckwood  and  the  Quarterly.  He  suffered 
in  proportion  as  his  ideal  was  high,  and  he  was 
conscious  of  falling  below  it.  In  England,  espe- 
cially, it  is  not  pleasant  to  be  ridiculous,  even  if 
you  are  a  lord  ;  but  to  be  ridiculous  and  an  apoth- 
ecary at  the  same  time  is  almost  as  bad  as  it  was 
formerly  to  be  excommunicated.  A  priori,  there 
was  something  absurd  in  poetry  written  by  the  son 
of  an  assistant  in  the  livery-stables  of  Mr.  Jen- 
nings, even  though  they  were  an  establishment, 
and  a  large  establishment,  and  nearly  opposite 
Finsbury  Circus.  Mr.  Gifford,  the  ex-cobbler, 
thought  so  in  the  Quarterly,  and  Mr.  Terry,  the 
actor, l  thought  so  even  more  distinctly  in  Black- 
wood,  bidding  the  young  apothecary  "  back  to  his 
gallipots !  "  It  is  not  pleasant  to  be  talked  down 
upon  by  your  inferiors  who  happen  to  have  the 
advantage  of  position,  nor  to  be  drenched  with 
ditch-water,  though  you  know  it  to  be  thrown  by 
a  scullion  in  a  garret. 

Keats,  as  his  was  a  temperament  in  which  sensi- 
bility was  excessive,  could  not  but  be  galled  by  this 
treatment.  He  was  galled  the  more  that  he  was 

1  Hay  don  (Autobiography,  vol.  i.  p.  379)  says  that  he  "strongly 
suspects  "  Terry  to  have  written  the  articles  in  i!  lack  wood. 


KEA  TS  227 

also  a  man  of  .strong  sense,  and  capable  of  under- 
standing clearly  how  hard  it  is  to  make  men  ac- 
knowledge solid  value  in  a  person  whom  they  have 
once  heartily  laughed  at.  Eeputation  is  in  itself 
only  a  farthing-candle,  of  wavering  and  uncertain 
flame,  and  easily  blown  out,  but  it  is  the  light  by 
which  the  world  looks  for  and  finds  merit.  Keats 
longed  for  fame,  but  longed  above  all  to  deserve 
it.  To  his  friend  Taylor  he  writes,  "  There  is  but 
one  way  for  me.  The  road  lies  through  study,  ap- 
plication, and  thought."  Thrilling  with  the  elec- 
tric touch  of  sacred  leaves,  he  saw  in  vision,  like 
Dante,  that  small  procession  of  the  elder  poets  to 
which  only  elect  centuries  can  add  another  lau- 
relled head.  Might  he,  too,  deserve  from  posterity 
the  love  and  reverence  which  he  paid  to  those  an- 
tique glories  ?  It  was  no  unworthy  ambition,  but  \. 
everything  was  against  him,  —  birth,  health,  even  7 
friends,  since  it  was  partly  on  their  account  that  / 
he  was  sneered  at.  His  very  name  stood  in  his 
way,  for  Fame  loves  best  such  syllables  as  are 
sweet  and  sonorous  on  the  tongue,  like  Spenserian, 
Shakespearian.  In  spite  of  Juliet,  there  is  a  great 
deal  in  names,  and  when  the  fairies  come  with 
their  gifts  to  the  cradle  of  the  selected  child,  let 
one,  wiser  than  the  rest,  choose  a  name  for  him 
from  which  well-sounding  derivatives  can  be  made, 
and,  best  of  all,  with  a  termination  in  on.  Men 
judge  the  current  coin  of  opinion  by  the  ring,  and 
are  readier  to  take  without  question  whatever  is 
Platonic,  Baconian,  Newtonian,  Johnsonian,  Wash- 
ingtonian,  Jeffersonian,  Napoleonic,  and  all  the 


KEA  TS 


rest.  You  cannot  make  a  good  adjective  out  of 
Keats,  —  the  more  pity,  —  and  to  say  a  thing 
is  Keatsy  is  to  contemn  it.  Fortune  likes  fine 


Haydon  tells  us  that  Keats  was  very  much  de- 
pressed by  the  fortunes  of  his  book.  This  was 
natural  enough,  but  he  took  it  all  in  a  manly  way, 
and  determined  to  revenge  himself  by  writing  bet- 
ter poetry.  He  knew  that  activity,  and  not  de- 
spondency, is  the  true  counterpoise  to  misfortune. 
Haydon  is  sure  of  the  change  in  his  spirits,  because 
he  would  come  to  the  painting-room  and  sit  silent 
for  hours.  But  we  rather  think  that  the  conversa- 
tion, where  Mr.  Haydon  was,  resembled  that  in  a 
young  author's  first  play,  where  the  other  inter- 
locutors are  only  brought  in  as  convenient  points 
for  the  hero  to  hitch  the  interminable  web  of  his 
monologue  upon.  Besides,  Keats  had  been  contin- 
uing his  education  this  year,  by  a  course  of  Elgin 
marbles  and  pictures  by  the  great  Italians,  and 
might  very  naturally  have  found  little  to  say  about 
Mr.  Haydon's  extensive  works,  that  he  would  have 
cared  to  hear.  Lord  Houghton,  on  the  other  hand, 
in  his  eagerness  to  prove  that  Keats  was  not  killed 
by  the  article  in  the  Quarterly,  is  carried  too  far 
towards  the  opposite  extreme,  and  more  than  hints 
that  he  was  not  even  hurt  by  it.  This  would  have 
been  true  of  Wordsworth,  who,  by  a  constant  com- 
panionship with  mountains,  had  acquired  some- 
thing of  their  manners,  but  was  simply  impossible 
to  a  man  of  Keats's  temperament. 

On  the  whole,  perhaps,   we   need   not  respect 


KEA  TS  229 

Keats  the  less  for  having  been  gifted  with  sensibil- 
ity, and  may  even  say  what  we  believe  to  be  true, 
that  his  health  was  injured  by  the  failure  of  his 
book.  A  man  cannot  have  a  sensuous  nature  and 
be  pachydermatous  at  the  same  time,  and  if  he  be 
imaginative  as  well  as  sensuous,  he  suffers  just  in 
proportion  to  the  amount  of  his  imagination.  It 
is  perfectly  true  that  what  we  call  the  world,  in 
these  affairs,  is  nothing  more  than  a  mere  Brocken 
spectre,  the  projected  shadow  of  ourselves ;  but  so 
long  as  we  do  not  know  this,  it  is  a  very  passable 
giant.  We  are  not  without  experience  of  natures 
so  purely  intellectual  that  their  bodies  had  no  more 
concern  in  their  mental  doings  and  sufferings  than 
a  house  has  with  the  good  or  ill  fortune  of  its  occu- 
pant. But  poets  are  not  built  on  this  plan,  and  espe- 
cially poets  like  Keats,  in  whom  the  moral  seems  to 
have  so  perfectly  interfused  the  physical  man,  that 
you  might  almost  say  he  could  feel  sorrow  with  his 
hands,  so  truly  did  his  body,  like  that  of  Donne's 
Mistress  Boulstred,  think  and  remember  and  fore- 
bode. The  healthiest  poet  of  whom  our  civiliza- 
tion has  been  capable  says  that  when  he  beholds 

"  desert  a  beggar  born, 
And  strength  by  limping  sway  disabeled, 
And  art  made  tongue-tied  by  authority," 

alluding,  plainly  enough,  to  the  Giffords  of  his 
day, 

"  And  simple  truth  miscalled  simplicity," 

as  it  was  long  afterward  in  Wordsworth's  case, 

"  And  captive  Good  attending  Captain  111," 


230  KEA  TS 

that  then  even  he,  the  poet  to  whom,  of  all  others, 
life  seems  to  have  been  dearest,  as  it  was  also  the 
fullest  of  enjoyment,  "  tired  of  all  these,"  had  noth- 
ing for  it  but  to  cry  for  "  restful  Death." 

Keats,  to  all  appearance,  accepted  his  ill  fortune 
courageously.  He  certainly  did  not  overestimate 
"  Endymion,"  and  perhaps  a  sense  of  humor  which 
was  not  wanting  in  him  may  have  served  as  a  buf- 
fer against  the  too  importunate  shock  of  disap- 
pointment. "  He  made  Ritchie  promise,"  says 
Haydon,  "  he  would  carry  his  '  Endymion  '  to  the 
great  desert  of  Sahara  and  fling  it  in  the  midst." 
On  the  9th  October,  1818,  he  writes  to  his  pub- 
lisher, Mr.  Hessey,  "  I  cannot  but  feel  indebted  to 
those  gentlemen  who  have  taken  my  part.  As  for 
the  rest,  I  begin  to  get  acquainted  with  my  own 
strength  and  weakness.  Praise  or  blame  has  but  a 
momentary  effect  on  the  man  whose  love  of  beauty 
in  the  abstract  makes  him  a  severe  critic  of  his 
own  works.  My  own  domestic  criticism  has  given 
me  pain  without  comparison  beyond  what  Black- 
wood  or  the  Quarterly  could  inflict ;  and  also,  when 
I  feel  I  am  right,  no  external  praise  can  give  me 
such  a  glow  as  my  own  solitary  reperception  and 
ratification  of  what  is  fine.  J.  S.  is  perfectly  right 
in  regard  to  '  the  slipshod  Endymion.'  That  it  is 
so  is  no  fault  of  mine.  No  !  though  it  may  sound 
a  little  paradoxical,  it  is  as  good  as  I  had  power 
make  it  by  myself.  Had  I  been  nervous  about  it 
being  a  perfect  piece,  and  with  that  view  aske 
advice  and  trembled  over  every  page,  it  we 
not  have  been  written  ;  for  it  is  not  in  my 


KEATS  231 

to  fumble.  I  will  write  independently.  I  have 
written  independently  without  judgment.  I  may 
write  independently  and  with  judgment,  hereafter. 
The  Genius  of  Poetry  must  work  out  its  own  sal- 
vation in  a  man.  It  cannot  be  matured  by  law 
and  precept,  but  by  sensation  and  watchfulness  in 
itself.  That  which  is  creative  must  create  itself. 
In  '  Endymion '  I  leaped  headlong  into  the  sea, 
and  thereby  have  become  better  acquainted  with 
the  soundings,  the  quicksands,  and  the  rocks,  than 
if  I  had  stayed  upon  the  green  shore,  and  piped  a 
silly  pipe,  and  took  tea  and  comfortable  advice.  I 
was  never  afraid  of  failure ;  for  I  would  sooner 
fail  than  not  be  among  the  greatest." 

This  was  undoubtedly  true,  and  it  was  naturally 
the  side  which  a  large-minded  person  would  display 
to  a  friend.  This  is  what  he  thought,  but  whether 
it  was  what  }\efelt,  I  think  doubtful.  I  look  upon 
it  rather  as  one  of  the  phenomena  of  that  mul- 
tanimous  nature  of  the  poet,  which  makes  him  for 
the  moment  that  of  which  he  has  an  intellectual 
perception.  Elsewhere  he  says  something  which 
seems  to  hint  at  the  true  state  of  the  case.  "  I 
must  think  that  difficulties  nerve  the  spirit  of  a 
man :  they  make  our  prime  objects  a  refuge  as 
well  as  a  passion"  One  cannot  help  contrasting ^ 
Keats  with  Wordsworth,  —  the  one  altogether 
poet ;  the  other  essentially  a  Wordsworth,  with 
the  poetic  faculty  added,  —  the  one  shifting  from 
form  to  form,  and  from  style  to  style,  and  pour- 
ing his  hot  throbbing  life  into  every  mould ;  the 
other  remaining  always  the  individual,  producing 


232  KEA  TS 

works,  and  not   so  much  living  in  his   poems  as 
memorially   recording   his   life    in    them.     When 
Wordsworth  alludes  to  the  foolish  criticisms  on  his 
writings,   he   speaks   serenely  and  generously   of 
Wordsworth  the  poet,  as  if  he  were  an  unbiassed 
third  person,  who  takes  up  the  argument  merely 
in    the    interest  of  literature.      He   towers   into 
a  bald  egotism  which  is  quite  above  and  beyond 
selfishness.     Poesy  was  his  employment ;   it  was 
Keats's  very  existence,  and  he  felt  the  rough  treat- 
ment of  his  verses  as  if  it  had  been  the  wounding 
'of    a   limb.     To   Wordsworth,    composing  was   a 
healthy  exercise ;  his  slow  pulse  and  imperturbable 
self-trust  gave  him  assurance  of  a  life  so  long  that 
he  could  wait ;  and  when  we  read  his  poems  we 
;  should  never  suspect  the  existence  in  him  of  any 
sense  but  that  of  observation,  as  if  Wordsworth 
the  poet  were  a  half-mad  land-surveyor,  accompa- 
!  nied  by  Mr.  Wordsworth  the  distributor  of  stamps 
as  a  kind  of  keeper.     But  every  one  of  Keats's 
poems  was  a  sacrifice  of  vitality ;  a  virtue  went 
away  from  him  into  every  one  of  them  ;  even  yet, 
as  we  turn  the  leaves,  they  seem  to  warm  and  thrill 
1  our  fingers  with  the  flush  of  his  fine  senses,  and  the 
i  flutter  of  his  electrical  nerves,  and  we  do  not  won- 
\  der  he  felt  that  what  he  did  was  to  be  done  swiftly. 
In  the  mean  time  his  younger  brother  languished 
and  died,  his  elder  seems  to  have  been  in  some  way 
unfortunate  and  had  gone  to  America,  and  Keats 
himself  showed  symptoms  of  the  hereditary  disease 
which  caused  his  death  at  last.     It  is  in  October, 
1818,  that  we  find  the  first  allusion  to  a  passion 


KEATS  233 

which  was  erelong  to  consume  him.  It  is  plain 
enough  beforehand  that  those  were  not  moral  or 
mental  graces  that  should  attract  a  man  like  Keats. 
His  intellect  was  satisfied  and  absorbed  by  his  art, 
his  books,  and  his  friends.  He  could  have  com- 
panionship and  appreciation  from  men  ;  what  he 
craved  of  woman  was  only  repose.  That  luxurious 
nature,  which  would  have  tossed  uneasily  on  a 
crumpled  rose-leaf,  must  have  something  softer  to 
rest  upon  than  intellect,  something  less  ethereal 
than  culture.  It  was  his  body  that  needed  to  have 
its  equilibrium  restored,  the  waste  of  his  nervous 
energy  that  must  be  repaired  by  deep  draughts  of 
the  overflowing  life  and  drowsy  tropical  force  of  an 
abundant  and  healthily  poised  womanhood.  Writ- 
ing to  his  sister-in-law,  he  says  of  this  nameless 
person :  "  She  is  not  a  Cleopatra,  but  is  at  least  a 
Charmian;  she  has  a  rich  Eastern  look;  she  has 
fine  eyes  and  fine  manners.  When  she  comes  into  a 
room  she  makes  the  same  impression  as  the  beauty 
of  a  leopardess.  She  is  too  fine  and  too  conscious 
of  herself  to  repulse  any  man  who  may  address  her. 
From  habit,  she  thinks  that  nothing  particular.  I 
always  find  myself  at  ease  with  such  a  woman ;  the 
picture  before  me  always  gives  me  a  life  and  ani- 
mation which  I  cannot  possibly  feel  with  anything 
inferior.  I  am  at  such  times  too  much  occupied  in 
admiring  to  be  awkward  or  in  a  tremble.  I  forget 
myself  entirely,  because  I  live  in  her.  You  will  by 
this  time  think  I  am  in  love  with  her,  so,  before  I 
go  any  farther,  I  will  tell  you  that  I  am  not.  She 
kept  me  awake  one  night,  as  a  tune  of  Mozart's 


234  KEA  TS. 

might  do.  I  speak  of  the  thing  as  a  pastime  and  an 
amusement,  than  which  I  can  feel  none  deeper  than 
a  conversation  with  an  imperial  woman,  the  very 
yes  and  no  of  whose  life  [lips]  is  to  me  a  banquet. 
...  I  like  her  and  her  like,  because  one  has  no 
sensation;  what  we  both  are  is  taken  for  granted. 
.  .  .  She  walks  across  a  room  in  such  a  manner 
that  a  man  is  drawn  toward  her  with  magnetic 
power.  ...  I  believe,  though,  she  has  faults,  the 
same  as  a  Cleopatra  or  a  Charmian  might  have  had. 
Yet  she  is  a  fine  thing,  speaking  in  a  worldly  way ; 
for  there  are  two  distinct  tempers  of  mind  in  which 
we  judge  of  things,  —  the  worldly,  theatrical,  and 
pantomimical ;  and  the  unearthly,  spiritual,  and 
ethereal.  In  the  former,  Bonaparte,  Lord  Byron, 
and  this  Charmian  hold  the  first  place  in  our  minds ; 
in  the  latter,  John  Howard,  Bishop  Hooker  rocking 
his  child's  cradle,  and  you,  my  dear  sister,  are  the 
conquering  feelings.  As  a  man  of  the  world,  I  love 
the  rich  talk  of  a  Charmian ;  as  an  eternal  being,  I 
love  the  thought  of  you.  I  should  like  her  to  ruin 
me,  and  I  should  like  you  to  save  me." 

It  is  pleasant  always  to  see  Love  hiding  his  head 
with  such  pains,  while  his  whole  body  is  so  clearly 
visible,  as  in  this  extract.  This  lady,  it  seems,  is 
not  a  Cleopatra,  only  a  Charmian ;  but  presently 
we  find  that  she  is  imperial.  He  does  not  love  her, 
but  he  would  just  like  to  be  ruined  by  her,  nothing 
more.  This  glimpse  of  her,  with  her  leopardess 
beauty,  crossing  the  room  and  drawing  men  after 
her  magnetically,  is  all  we  have.  She  seems  to 
have  been  still  living  in  1848,  and,  as  Lord  Hough- 


KEATS  235 

ton  tells  us,  kept  the  memory  of  the  poet  sacred. 
"  She  is  an  East-Indian,"  Keats  says,  "  and  ought 
to  be  her  grandfather's  heir."  Her  name  we  do 
not  know.  It  appears  from  Dilke's  "  Papers  of  a 
Critic  "  that  they  were  betrothed :  "  It  is  quite  a 

settled  thing  between  John  Keats  and  Miss . 

God  help  them.     It  is  a  bad  thing  for  them.     The 
mother  says  she  cannot  prevent  it,  and  that  her 
only  hope  is  that  it  will  go  off.     He  don't  like  any 
one  to  look  at  her  or  to  speak  to  her."     Alas,  the 
tropical  warmth  became  a  consuming  fire ! 
"  His  passion  cruel  grown  took  on  a  hue 
Fierce  and  sanguineous." 

Between  this  time  and  the  spring  of  1820  he 
seems  to  have  worked  assiduously.  Of  course, 
worldly  success  was  of  more  importance  than  ever. 
He  began  "Hyperion,"  but  had  given  it  up  in 
September,  1819,  because,  as  he  said,  "  there  were 
too  many  Miltonic  inversions  in  it."  He  wrote 
"Lamia"  after  an  attentive  study  of  Dryden's 
versification.  This  period  also  produced  the  "  Eve 
of  St.  Agnes,"  "  Isabella,"  and  the  odes  to  the 
"  Nightingale  "  and  to  the  "  Grecian  Urn."  He 
studied  Italian,  read  Ariosto,  and  wrote  part  of  a 
humorous  poem,  "  The  Cap  and  Bells."  He  tried 
his  hand  at  tragedy,  and  Lord  Houghton  has  pub- 
lished among  his  "Remains,"  "Otho  the  Great," 
and  all  that  was  ever  written  of  "  King  Stephen." 
We  think  he  did  unwisely,  for  a  biographer  is 
hardly  called  upon  to  show  how  ill  his  biographee 
could  do  anything. 

In  the  winter  of  1820  he  was  chilled  in  riding  on 


236  KEA  TS 

the  top  of  a  stage-coach,  and  came  home  in  a  state 
of  feverish  excitement.  .He  was  persuaded  to  go 
to  bed,  and  in  getting  between  the  cold  sheets, 
coughed  slightly.  "That  is  blood  in  my  mouth," 
he  said ;  "  bring  me  the  candle ;  let  me  see  this 
blood."  It  was  of  a  brilliant  red,  and  his  medical 
knowledge  enabled  him  to  interpret  the  augury. 
Those  narcotic  odors  that  seem  to  breathe  seaward, 
and  steep  in  repose  the  senses  of  the  voyager  who 
is  drifting  toward  the  shore  of  the  mysterious  Other 
World,  appeared  to  envelop  him,  and,  looking  up 
with  sudden  calmness,  he  said,  "  I  know  the  color 
of  that  blood ;  it  is  arterial  blood ;  I  cannot  be  de- 
ceived in  that  color.  That  drop  is  my  death-war- 
rant; I  must  die." 

There  was  a  slight  rally  during  the  summer  of 
that  year,  but  toward  autumn  he  grew  worse  again, 
and  it  was  decided  that  he  should  go  to  Italy.  He 
was  accompanied  thither  by  his  friend,  Mr.  Severn, 
an  artist.  After  embarking,  he  wrote  to  his  friend, 
Mr.  Brown.  We  give  a  part  of  this  letter,  which  is 
so  deeply  tragic  that  the  sentences  we  take  almost 
seem  to  break  away  from  the  rest  with  a  cry  of 
anguish,  like  the  branches  of  Dante's  lamentable 
wood. 

"  I  wish  to  write  on  subjects  that  will  not  agitate 
me  much.  There  is  one  I  must  mention  and  have 
done  with  it.  Even  if  my  body  would  recover  of 
itself,  this  would  prevent  it.  The  very  thing  which 
I  want  to  live  most  for  will  be  a  great  occasion  of 
my  death.  I  cannot  help  it.  Who  can  help  it  ? 
Were  I  in  health  it  would  make  me  ill,  and  how 


KEATS  237 

can  I  bear  it  in  my  state  ?  I  dare  say  you  will  be 
able  to  guess  on  what  subject  I  am  harping,  —  you 
know  what  was  my  greatest  pain  during  the  first 
part  of  my  illness  at  your  house.  I  wish  for  death 
every  day  and  night  to  deliver  me  from  these  pains, 
and  then  I  wish  death  away,  for  death  would  de- 
stroy even  those  pains,  which  are  better  than  noth- 
ing. Land  and  sea,  weakness  and  decline,  are 
great  separators,  but  Death  is  the  great  divorcer 
forever.  When  the  pang  of  this  thought  has 
passed  through  my  mind,  I  may  say  the  bitterness 
of  death  is  passed.  I  often  wish  for  you,  that  you 
might  flatter  me  with  the  best.  I  think,  without 
my  mentioning  it,  for  my  sake,  you  would  be  a 

friend  to  Miss when  I  am  dead.     You  think 

she  has  many  faults,  but  for  my  sake  think  she  has 
not  one.  If  there  is  anything  you  can  do  for  her 
by  word  or  deed  I  know  you  will  do  it.  I  am  in  a 
state  at  present  in  which  woman,  merely  as  woman, 
can  have  no  more  power  over  me  than  stocks  and 
stones,  and  yet  the  difference  of  my  sensations  with 

respect  to  Miss and  my  sister  is  amazing,  — 

the  one  seems  to  absorb  the  other  to  a  degree  in- 
credible. I  seldom  think  of  my  brother  and  sister 

in  America ;  the  thought  of  leaving  Miss is 

beyond  everything  horrible,  —  the  sense  of  dark- 
ness coming  over  me,  —  I  eternally  see  her  figure 
eternally  vanishing ;  some  of  the  phrases  she  was  in 
the  habit  of  using  during  my  last  nursing  at  Went- 
worth  Place  ring  in  my  ears.  Is  there  another 
life?  Shall  I  awake  and  find  all  this  a  dream? 
There  must  be ;  we  cannot  be  created  for  this  sort 
of  suffering." 


238  KEA  TS 

To  the  same  friend  he  writes  again  from  Naples, 
1st  November,  1820  :  — 

"The  persuasion  that  I  shall  see  her  no  more 
will  kill  me.  My  dear  Brown,  I  should  have  had 
her  when  I  was  in  health,  and  I  should  have  re- 
mained well.  I  can  bear  to  die,  —  I  cannot  bear 
to  leave  her.  O  God !  God !  God !  Everything  1 
have  in  my  trunks  that  reminds  me  of  her  goes 
through  me  like  a  spear.  The  silk  lining  she  put 
in  my  travelling-cap  scalds  my  head.  My  imagi- 
nation is  horribly  vivid  about  her,  —  I  see  her,  I 
hear  her.  There  is  nothing  in  the  world  of  suf- 
ficient interest  to  divert  me  from  her  a  moment. 
This  was  the  case  when  I  was  in  England ;  I  can- 
not recollect,  without  shuddering,  the  time  that  I 
was  a  prisoner  at  Hunt's,  and  used  to  keep  my  eyes 
fixed  on  Hampstead  all  day.  Then  there  was  a 
good  hope  of  seeing  her  again,  —  now  !  —  O  that  I 
could  be  buried  near  where  she  lives !  I  am  afraid 
to  write  to  her,  to  receive  a  letter  from  her,  —  to 
see  her  handwriting  would  break  my  heart.  Even 
to  hear  of  her  anyhow,  to  see  her  name  written, 
would  be  more  than  I  can  bear.  My  dear  Brown, 
what  am  I  to  do  ?  Where  can  I  look  for  consola- 
tion or  ease  ?  If  I  had  any  chance  of  recovery, 
this  passion  would  kill  me.  Indeed,  through  the 
whole  of  my  illness,  both  at  your  house  and  at 
Kentish  Town,  this  fever  has  never  ceased  wearing 
me  out." 

The  two  friends  went  almost  immediately  from 
Naples  to  Rome,  where  Keats  was  treated  with 
great  kindness  by  the  distinguished  physician,  Dr. 


KEATS  239 

(afterward  Sir  James)  Clark.1  But  there  was  no 
hope  from  the  first.  His  disease  was  beyond 
remedy,  as  his  heart  was  beyond  comfort.  The 
very  fact  that  life  might  be  happy  deepened  his 
despair.  He  might  not  have  sunk  so  soon,  but  the 
waves  in  which  he  was  struggling  looked  only  the 
blacker  that  they  were  shone  upon  by  the  signal- 
torch  that  promised  safety  and  love  and  rest. 

It  is  good  to  know  that  one  of  Keats's  last  plea- 
sures was  in  hearing  Severn  read  aloud  from  a 
volume  of  Jeremy  Taylor.  On  first  coming  to 
Koine,  he  had  bought  a  copy  of  Alfieri,  but,  find- 
ing on  the  second  page  these  lines, 

"Misera  me  !  sollievo  a  me  non  resta 
Altro  che  il  pianto,  ed  il  pianto  e  delitto," 

he  laid  down  the  book  and  opened  it  no  more.  On 
the  14th  February,  1821,  Severn  speaks  of  a  change 
that  had  taken  place  in  him  toward  greater  quiet- 
ness and  peace.  He  talked  much,  and  fell  at  last 
into  a  sweet  sleep,  in  which  he  seemed  to  have 
happy  dreams.  Perhaps  he  heard  the  soft  footfall 
of  the  angel  of  Death,  pacing  to  and  fro  under 
his  window,  to  be  his  Valentine.  That  night  he 
asked  to  have  this  epitaph  inscribed  upon  his  grave- 
stone :  — 

"HERE  LIES  ONE  WHOSE  NAME  WAS  WRIT  IN  WATER." 
On  the  23d  he  died,  without  pain  and  as  if  falling 
asleep.     His  last  words  were,  "  I  am  dying ;  I  shall 

1  The  lodging  of  Keats  was  on  the  Piazza  di  Spagna,  in  the  first 
house  on  the  right  hand  in  going  up  the  Scalinata.  Mr.  Severn's 
Studio  is  said  to  have  been  in  the  Cancello  over  the  garden  gate  of 
the  Villa  Negroni,  pleasantly  familiar  to  all  Americans  as  the 
Roman  home  of  their  countryman  Crawford. 


240  KEATS 

die  easy ;  don't  be  frightened,  be  firm  and  thank 
God  it  has  come  !  " 

He  was  buried  in  the  Protestant  burial-ground  at 
Rome,  in  that  part  of  it  which  is  now  disused  and 
secluded  from  the  rest.  A  short  time  before  his 
death  he  told  Severn  that  he  thought  his  intensest 
pleasure  in  life  had  been  to  watch  the  growth  of 
flowers ;  and  once,  after  lying  peacefully  awhile,  he 
said,  "  I  feel  the  flowers  growing  over  me."  His 
grave  is  marked  by  a  little  headstone  on  which  are 
carved  somewhat  rudely  his  name  and  age,  and  the 
epitaph  dictated  by  himself.  No  tree  or  shrub  has 
been  planted  near  it,  but  the  daisies,  faithful  to 
their  buried  lover,  crowd  his  small  mound  with  a 
galaxy  of  their  innocent  stars,  more  prosperous 
than  those  under  which  he  lived.1 

In  person,  Keats  was  below  the  middle  height, 
with  a  head  small  in  proportion  to  the  breadth  of 
his  shoulders.  His  hair  was  brown  and  fine,  fall- 
ing in  natural  ringlets  about  a  face  in  which  energy 
and  sensibility  were  remarkably  mixed.  Every 
feature  was  delicately  cut ;  the  chin  was  bold,  and 
about  the  mouth  something  of  a  pugnacious  expres- 
sion. His  eyes  were  mellow  and  glowing,  large, 
dark,  and  sensitive.  At  the  recital  of  a  noble 
action  or  a  beautiful  thought  they  would  suffuse 

1  Written  in  1854.  O  irony  of  Time !  Ten  years  after  the 
poet's  death  the  woman  he  had  so  loved  wrote  to  his  friend  Mr. 
Dilke,  that  "the  kindest  act  would  be  to  let  him  rest  forever  in 
the  obscurity  to  which  circumstances  had  condemned  him "  I 
( Papers  of  a  Critic,  I  11.)  O  Time  the  atoner !  In  1874  I  found 
the  grave  planted  with  shrubs  and  flowers,  the  pious  homage  of 
the  daughter  of  our  most  eminent  American  sculptor. 


KEA  TS  241 

with  tears,  and  his  mouth  trembled.1  Haydon  says 
that  his  eyes  had  an  inward  Delphian  look  that 
was  perfectly  divine. 

The  faults  of  Keats's  poetry  are  obvious  enough, 
but  it  should  be  remembered  that  he  died  at  twenty- 
five,  and  that  he  offends  by  superabundance  and 
not  poverty.  That  he  was  overlanguaged  at  first 
there  can  be  no  doubt,  and  in  this  was  implied  the 
possibility  of  falling  back  to  the  perfect  mean  of 
diction.  It  is  only  by  the  rich  that  the  costly  plain- 
ness, which  at  once  satisfies  the  taste  and  the  im- 
agination, is  attainable. 

Whether  Keats  was  original  or  not,  I  do  not 
think  it  useful  to  discuss  until  it  has  been  settled 
what  originality  is.  Lord  Houghton  tells  us  that 
this  merit  (whatever  it  be)  has  been  denied  to 
Keats,  because  his  poems  take  the  color  of  the 
authors  he  happened  to  be  reading  at  the  time  he 
wrote  them.  But  men  have  their  intellectual  an- 
cestry, and  the  likeness  of  some  one  of  them  is  for- 
ever unexpectedly  flashing  out  in  the  features  of  a 
descendant,  it  may  be  after  a  gap  of  several  gen- 
erations. In  the  parliament  of  the  present  every 
man  represents  a  constituency  of  the  past.  It  is 
true  that  Keats  has  the  accent  of  the  men  from 
whom  he  learned  to  speak,  but  this  is  to  make 
originality  a  mere  question  of  externals,  and  in  this 
sense  the  author  of  a  dictionary  might  bring  an 
action  of  trover  against  every  author  who  used  his 
words.  It  is  the  man  behind  the  words  that  gives 
them  value,  and  if  Shakespeare  help  himself  to  a 

1  Leigh  Hunt's    Autobiography,  ii.  43. 


242  KEA  TS 

verse  or  a  phrase,  it  is  with  ears  that  have  learned 
of  him  to  listen  that  we  feel  the  harmony  of  the 
one,  and  it  is  the  mass  of  his  intellect  that  makes 
the  other  weighty  with  meaning.  Enough  that  we 
recognize  in  Keats  that  indefinable  newness  and 
unexpectedness  which  we  call  genius.  The  sunset 
is  original  every  evening,  though  for  thousands  of 
years  it  has  built  out  of  the  same  light  and  vapor 
its  visionary  cities  with  domes  and  pinnacles,  and 
its  delectable  mountains  which  night  shall  utterly 
abase  and  destroy. 

Three  men,  almost  contemporaneous  with  each 
(  other,  —  Wordsworth,  Keats,  and  Byron,  —  were 
$he  great  means  of  bringing  back  English  poetry 
from  the  sandy  deserts  of  rhetoric,  and  recovering 
for  her  her  triple  inheritance  of  simplicity,  sensu- 
/ousness,  and  passion.  Of  these,  Wordsworth  was 
the  only  conscious  reformer,  and  his  hostility  to  the 
existing  formalism  injured  his  earlier  poems  by 
tingeing  them  with  something  of  iconoclastic  ex- 
travagance. He  was  the  deepest  thinker,  Keats 
the  most  essentially  a  poet,  and  Byron  the  most 
keenly  intellectual  of  the  three.  Keats  had  the 
broadest  mind,  or  at  least  his  mind  was  open  on 
more  sides,  and  he  was  able  to  understand  Words- 
worth and  judge  Byron,  equally  conscious,  through 
his  artistic  sense,  of  the  greatnesses  of  the  one  and 
the  many  littlenesses  of  the  other,  while  Words- 
worth was  isolated  in  a  feeling  of  his  prophetic 
character,  and  Byron  had  only  an  uneasy  and  jea- 
lous instinct  of  contemporary  merit.  The  poems  of 
Wordsworth,  as  he  was  the  most  individual,  accord- 


KEA  TS  243 

ingly  reflect  the  moods  of  his  own  nature;  those 
of  Keats,  from  sensitiveness  of  organization,  the 
moods  of  his  own  taste  and  feeling ;  and  those  of 
Byron,  who  was  impressible  chiefly  through  the 
understanding,  the  intellectual  and  moral  wants  of 
the  time  in  which  he  lived.  Wordsworth  has  influ- 
enced most  the  ideas  of  succeeding  poets ;  Keats, 
their  forms  ;  and  Byron,  interesting  to  men  of  im- 
agination less  for  his  writings  than  for  what  his 
writings  indicate,  reappears  no  more  in  poetry,  but 
presents  an  ideal  to  youth  made  restless  with  vague 
desires  not  yet  regulated  by  experience  nor  sup- 
plied with  motives  by  the  duties  of  life. 

Keats  certainly  had  more  of  the  penetrative  and 
sympathetic  imagination  which  belongs  to  the  poet, 
of  that  imagination  which  identifies  itself  with  the 
momentary  object  of  its  contemplation,  than  any 
man  of  these  later  days.  It  is  not  merely  that  he 
has  studied  the  Elizabethans  and  caught  their  turn 
of  thought,  but  that  he  really  sees  things  with  their 
sovereign  eye,  and  feels  them  with  their  electrified 
senses.  His  imagination  was  his  bliss  and  bane. 
Was  he  cheerful,  he  "  hops  about  the  gravel  with 
the  sparrows  "  ;  was  he  morbid,  he  "  would  reject 
a  Petrarcal  coronation,  —  on  account  of  my  dying 
day,  and  because  women  have  cancers."  So  im- 
pressible was  he  as  to  say  that  he  "  had  no  nature," 
meaning  character.  But  he  knew  what  the  faculty 
was  worth,  and  says  finely,  "  The  imagination  may 
be  compared  to  Adam's  dream:  he  awoke  and 
found  it  truth."  He  had  an  unerring  instinct  for 
the  poetic  uses  of  things,  and  for  him  they  had  no 


244  KEA  TS 

other  use.  We  are  apt  to  talk  of  the  classic  re- 
naissance as  of  a  phenomenon  long  past,  nor  ever 
to  be  renewed,  and  to  think  the  Greeks  and  Ro- 
mans alone  had  the  mighty  magic  to  work  such  a 
miracle.  To  me  one  of  the  most  interesting  aspects 
of  Keats  is  that  in  him  we  have  an  example  of  the 
renaissance  going  on  almost  under  our  own  eyes, 
and  that  the  intellectual  ferment  was  in  him  kin- 
dled by  a  purely  English  leaven.  He  had  properly 
no  scholarship,  any  more  than  Shakespeare  had, 
but  like  him  he  assimilated  at  a  touch  whatever 
could  serve  his  purpose.  His  delicate  senses  ab- 
sorbed culture  at  every  pore.  Of  the  self-denial 
to  which  he  trained  himself  (unexampled  in  one  so 
young)  the  second  draft  of  Hyperion  as  compared 
with  the  first  is  a  conclusive  proof.  And  far  in- 
deed is  his  "  Lamia "  from  the  lavish  indiscrimi- 
nation of  "  Endymion."  In  his  Odes  he  showed  a 
sense  of  form  and  proportion  which  we  seek  vainly 
in  almost  any  other  English  poet,  and  some  of  his 
sonnets  (taking  all  qualities  into  consideration)  are 
the  most  perfect  in  our  language.  No  doubt  there 
is  something  tropical  and  of  strange  overgrowth 
in  his  sudden  maturity,  but  it  was  maturity  never- 
theless. Happy  the  young  poet  who  has  the  sav- 
ing fault  of  exuberance,  if  he  have  also  the  shaping 
faculty  that  sooner  or  later  will  amend  it ! 

As  every  young  person  goes  through  all  the 
world-old  experiences,  fancying  them  something 
peculiar  and  personal  to  himself,  so  it  is  with  every 
new  generation,  whose  youth  always  finds  its  repre- 
sentatives in  its  poets.  Keats  rediscovered  the  de- 


KEATS  245 

light  and  wonder  that  lay  enchanted  in  the  diction- 
ary. Wordsworth  revolted  at  the  poetic  diction 
which  he  found  in  vogue,  but  his  own  language 
rarely  rises  above  it,  except  when  it  is  upborne  by 
the  thought.  Keats  had  an  instinct  for  fine  words, 
which  are  in  themselves  pictures  and  ideas,  and 
had  more  of  the  power  of  poetic  expression  than 
any  modern  English  poet.  And  by  poetic  expres- 
sion I  do  not  mean  merely  a  vividness  in  particu-  / 
lars,  but  the  right  feeling  which  heightens  or  sub-  / 
dues  a  passage  or  a  whole  poem  to  the  proper  tone, 
and  gives  entireness  to  the  effect.  There  is  a  great 
deal  more  than  is  commonly  supposed  in  this  choice 
of  words.  Men's  thoughts  and  opinions  are  in  a 
great  degree  vassals  of  him  who  invents  a  new 
phrase  or  reapplies  an  old  epithet.  The  thought 
or  feeling  a  thousand  times  repeated  becomes  his 
at  last  who  utters  it  best.  This  power  of  language 
is  veiled  in  the  old  legends  which  make  the  invis-  / 
ible  powers  the  servants  of  some  word.  As 
as  we  have  discovered  the  word  for  our  joy  or 
sorrow  we  are  no  longer  its  serfs,  but  its  lords. 
We  reward  the  discoverer  of  an  anaesthetic  for  the 
body  and  make  him  member  of  all  the  societies, 
but  him  who  finds  a  nepenthe  for  the  soul  we  elect 
into  the  small  academy  of  the  immortals. 

The  poems  of  Keats  mark  an  epoch  in  English 
poetry ;  for,  however  often  we  may  find  traces  of 
it  in  others,  in  them  found  its  most  unconscious 
expression  that  reaction  against  the  barrel-organ 
style  which  had  been  reigning  by  a  kind  of  sleepy 
divine  right  for  half  a  century.  The  lowest  point 


246  KEATS 

was  indicated  when  there  was  such  an  utter  con- 
founding of  the  common  and  the  uncommon  sense 
that  Dr.  Johnson  wrote  verse  and  Burke  prose. 
The  most  profound  gospel  of  criticism  was,  that 
nothing  was  good  poetry  that  could  not  be  trans- 
lated into  good  prose,  as  if  one  should  say  that  the 
test  of  sufficient  moonlight  was  that  tallow-candles 
could  be  made  of  it.  We  find  Keats  at  first  going 
to  the  other  extreme,  and  endeavoring  to  extract 
green  cucumbers  from  the  rays  of  tallow ;  but  we 
see  also  incontestable  proof  of  the  greatness  and 
purity  of  his  poetic  gift  in  the  constant  return 
toward  equilibrium  and  repose  in  his  later  poems. 
And  it  is  a  repose  always  lofty  and  clear-aired,  like 
that  of  the  eagle  balanced  in  incommunicable  sun- 
shine. In  him  a  vigorous  understanding  developed 
itself  in  equal  measure  with  the  divine  faculty ; 
thought  emancipated  itself  from  expression  without 
becoming  in  turn  its  tyrant ;  and  music  and  meaning 
floated  together,  accordant  as  swan  and  shadow,  on 
the  smooth  element  of  his  verse.  Without  losing 
its  sensuousness,  his  poetry  refined  itself  and  grew 
more  inward,  and  the  sensational  was  elevated  into 
the  typical  by  the  control  of  that  finer  sense  which 
underlies  the  senses  and  is  the  spirit  of  them. 


LIBEARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS1 

1858-1864 

MANY  of  our  older  readers  can  remember  the 
anticipation  with  which  they  looked  for  each  suc- 
cessive volume  of  the  late  Dr.  Young's  excellent' 
series  of  old  English  prose-writers,  and  the  delight 
with  which  they  carried  it  home,  fresh  from  the 
press  and  the  bindery  in  its  appropriate  livery  of 
evergreen.  To  most  of  us  it  was  our  first  intro- 
duction to  the  highest  society  of  letters,  and  we 
still  feel  grateful  to  the  departed  scholar  who  gave 
us  to  share  the  conversation  of  such  men  as  Lati- 
mer,  More,  Sidney,  Taylor,  Browne,  Fuller,  and 
Walton.  What  a  sense  of  security  in  an  old  book 
which  Time  has  criticised  for  us !  What  a  pre- 
cious feeling  of  seclusion  in  having  a  double  wall  of 
centuries  between  us  and  the  heats  and  clamors  of 
contemporary  literature !  How  limpid  seems  the 
thought,  how  pure  the  old  wine  of  scholarship  that 
has  been  settling  for  so  many  generations  in  those 
silent  crypts  and  Falernian  amphorce  of  the  Past ! 
No  other  writers  speak  to  us  with  the  authority  of 
those  whose  ordinary  speech  was  that  of  our  trans- 
lation of  the  Scriptures  ;  to  no  modern  is  that 
frank  unconsciousness  possible  which  was  natural 
1  London :  John  Russell  Smith.  1856-64. 


248  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

to  a  period  when  yet  reviews  were  not  ;  and  no 
later  style  breathes  that  country  charm  characteris- 
tic of  days  ere  the  metropolis  had  drawn  all  lit- 
erary activity  to  itself,  and  the  trampling  feet  of 
the  multitude  had  banished  the  lark  and  the  daisy 
from  the  fresh  privacies  of  language.  Truly,  as 
compared  with  the  present,  these  old  voices  seem 
to  come  from  the  morning  fields  and  not  the  paved 
thoroughfares  of  thought. 

Even  the  "  Retrospective  Review  "  continues  to 
be  good  reading,  in  virtue  of  the  antique  aroma 
(for  wine  only  acquires  its  bouquet  by  age)  which 
pervades  its  pages.  Its  sixteen  volumes  are  so 
many  tickets  of  admission  to  the  vast  and  devious 
vaults  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries, 
through  which  we  wander,  tasting  a  thimbleful 
of  rich  Canary,  honeyed  Cyprus,  or  subacidulous 
Hock,  from  what  dusty  butt  or  keg  our  fancy 
chooses.  The  years  during  which  this  review  was 
published  were  altogether  the  most  fruitful  in  gen- 
uine appreciation  of  old  English  literature.  Books 
were  prized  for  their  imaginative  and  not  their  an- 
tiquarian value  by  young  writers  who  sate  at  the 
feet  of  Lamb  and  Coleridge.  Rarities  of  style,  of 
thought,  of  fancy,  were  sought,  rather  than  the  bar- 
ren scarcities  of  typography.  But  another  race  of 
men  seems  to  have  sprung  up,  in  whom  the  futile 
enthusiasm  of  the  collector  predominates,  who  sub- 
stitute archseologic  perversity  for  fine-nerved  schol- 
arship, and  the  worthless  profusion  of  the  curiosity- 
shop  for  the  sifted  exclusiveness  of  the  cabinet  of 
Art.  They  forget,  in  their  fanaticism  for  anti- 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  249 

quity,  that  the  dust  of  never  so  many  centuries  is 
impotent  to  transform  a  curiosity  into  a  gem,  that 
only  good  books  absorb  mellowness  of  tone  from 
age,  and  that  a  baptismal  register  which  proves  a 
patriarchal  longevity  (if  existence  be  life)  cannot 
make  mediocrity  anything  but  a  bore,  or  garrulous 
commonplace  entertaining.  There  are  volumes 
which  have  the  old  age  of  Plato,  rich  with  gath- 
ering experience,  meditation,  and  wisdom,  which 
seem  to  have  sucked  color  and  ripeness  from  the 
genial  autumns  of  all  the  select  intelligences  that 
have  steeped  them  in  the  sunshine  of  their  love  and 
appreciation; — these  quaint  freaks  of  russet  tell  of 
Montaigne  ;  these  stripes  of  crimson  fire,  of  Shake- 
speare ;  this  sober  gold,  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne ; 
this  purpling  bloom,  of  Lamb  ;  in  such  fruits  we 
taste  the  legendary  gardens  of  Alcinoiis  and  the 
orchards  of  Atlas  ;  and  there  are  volumes  again 
which  can  claim  only  the  inglorious  senility  of  Old 
Parr  or  older  Jenkins,  which  have  outlived  their 
half-dozen  of  kings  to  be  the  prize  of  showmen  and 
treasuries  of  the  born-to-be-forgotten  trifles  of  a 
hundred  years  ago. 

We  confess  a  bibliothecarian  avarice  that  gives 
all  books  a  value  in  our  eyes ;  there  is  for  us  a 
recondite  wisdom  in  the  phrase,  "A  book  is  a 
book  "  ;  from  the  time  when  we  made  the  first  cat- 
alogue of  our  library,  in  which  "  Bible,  large,  1 
vol.,"  and  "  Bible,  small,  1  vol.,"  asserted  their  al- 
phabetic individuality  and  were  the  sole  B&  in  our 
little  hive,  we  have  had  a  weakness  even  for  those 
checker-board  volumes  that  only  fill  up.  We  can- 


250  LIBRARY   OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

not  breathe  the  thin  air  of  that  Pepysian  self- 
denial,  that  Himalayan  selectness,  which,  content 
with  one  bookcase,  would  have  no  tomes  in  it  but 
porphyrogeniti,  books  of  the  bluest  blood,  making 
room  for  choicer  new-comers  by  a  continuous  ostra- 
cism to  the  garret  of  present  incumbents.  There 
is  to  us  a  sacredness  in  a  volume,  however  dull  ; 
we  live  over  again  the  author's  lonely  labors  and 
tremulous  hopes ;  we  see  him,  on  his  first  appear- 
ance after  parturition,  "as  well  as  could  be  ex- 
pected," a  nervous  sympathy  yet  surviving  between 
the  late-severed  umbilical  cord  and  the  wondrous 
offspring,  as  he  doubtfully  enters  the  Mermaid,  or 
the  Devil  Tavern,  or  the  Coffee-house  of  Will  or 
Button,  blushing  under  the  eye  of  Ben  or  Dryden 
or  Addison,  as  if  they  must  needs  know  him  for 
the  author  of  the  "  Modest  Enquiry  into  the  Pre- 
sent State  of  Dramatique  Poetry,"  or  of  the  "  Uni- 
ties briefly  considered  by  Philomusus,"  of  which 
they  have  never  heard  and  never  will  hear  so  much 
as  the  names  ;  we  see  the  country-gentlemen  (sole 
cause  of  its  surviving  to  our  day)  who  buy  it  as  a 
book  no  gentleman's  library  can  be  complete  with- 
out ;  we  see  the  spendthrift  heir,  whose  horses  and 
hounds  and  Pharaonic  troops  of  friends,  drowned 
in  a  Red  Sea  of  claret,  bring  it  to  the  hammer,  the 
tall  octavo  in  tree-calf  following  the  ancestral  oaks 
of  the  park.  Such  a  volume  is  sacred  to  us.  But 
it  must  be  the  original  foundling  of  the  book-stall, 
the  engraved  blazon  of  some  extinct  baronetcy 
within  its  cover,  its  leaves  enshrining  memorial' 
flowers  of  some  passion  which  the  churchyard 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  251 

smothered  ere  the  Stuarts  were  yet  discrowned, 
suggestive  of  the  trail  of  laced  ruffles,  burnt  here 
and  there  with  ashes  from  the  pipe  of  some  dozing 
poet,  its  binding  worn  and  weather-stained,  that 
has  felt  the  inquisitive  finger,  perhaps,  of  Malone, 
or  thrilled  to  the  touch  of  Lamb,  doubtful  between 
desire  and  the  odd  sixpence.  When  it  comes  to  a 
question  of  reprinting,  we  are  more  choice.  The 
new  duodecimo  is  bald  and  bare,  indeed,  compared 
with  its  battered  prototype  that  could  draw  us  with 
a  single  hair  of  association. 

It  is  not  easy  to  divine  the  rule  which  has  gov- 
erned Mr.  Smith  in  making  the  selections  for  his 
series.  A  choice  of  old  authors  should  be  aflorile- 
gium,  and  not  a  botanist's  hortus  siccus,  to  which 
grasses  are  as  important  as  the  single  shy  blossom 
of  a  summer.  The  old-maidenly  genius  of  anti- 
quarianism  seems  to  have  presided  over  the  editing 
of  the  "  Library."  We  should  be  inclined  to  sur- 
mise that  the  works  to  be  reprinted  had  been  com- 
monly suggested  by  gentlemen  with  whom  they 
.were  especial  favorites,  or  who  were  ambitious  that 
their  own  names  should  be  signalized  on  the  title- 
pages  with  the  suffix  of  EDITOR.  The  volumes  al- 
ready published  are :  Increase  Mather's  "  Remark- 
able Providences " ;  the  poems  of  Drummond  of 
Hawthornden  ;  the  "  Visions  of  Piers  Ploughman"  ; 
the  works  in  prose  and  verse  of  Sir  Thomas  Over- 
bury  ;  the  "  Hymns  and  Songs  "  and  the  "  Hallelu- 
jah "  of  George  Wither ;  the  poems  of  Southwell ; 
Selden's  "Table-Talk";  the  "Enchiridion"  of 
Quarles  ;  the  dramatic  works  of  Marston,  Webster, 


252  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

and  Lilly ;  Chapman's  translation  of  Homer ; 
Lovelace,  and  four  volumes  of  "Early  English 
Poetry."  The  volume  of  Mather  is  curious  and 
entertaining,  and  fit  to  stand  on  the  same  shelf  with 
the  "  Magnalia  "  of  his  book-suffocated  son.  Cun- 
ningham's comparatively  recent  edition,  we  should 
think,  might  satisfy  for  a  long  time  to  come  the 
demand  for  Drummond,  whose  chief  value  to  pos- 
terity is  as  the  Boswell  of  Ben  Jonson.  Sir  Thomas 
Overbury's  "  Characters  "  are  interesting  illustra- 
tions of  contemporary  manners,  and  a  mine  of  foov- 
notes  to  the  works  of  better  men,  —  but,  with  the 
exception  of  "  The  Fair  and  Happy  Milkmaid," 
they  are  dull  enough  to  have  pleased  James  the 
First ;  his  "  Wife "  is  a  cento  of  far-fetched  con- 
ceits, —  here  a  tomtit,  and  there  a  hen  mistaken  for 
a  pheasant,  like  the  contents  of  a  cockney's  game- 
bag,  and  his  chief  interest  for  us  lies  in  his  having 
been  mixed  up  with  an  inexplicable  tragedy  and 
poisoned  in  the  Tower,  not  without  suspicion  of 
royal  complicity.  The  "Piers  Ploughman"  is  a 
reprint,  with  very  little  improvement  that  we  can 
discover,  of  Mr.  Wright's  former  edition.  It  would 
have  been  very  well  to  have  republished  the  "  Fair 
Virtue,"  and  "  Shepherd's  Hunting "  of  George 
Wither,  which  contain  all  the  true  poetry  he  eve 
wrote ;  but  we  can  imagine  nothing  more  drear 
than  the  seven  hundred  pages  of  his  "  Hymns 
Songs,"  whose  only  use,  that  we  can  conceive 
would  be  as  penal  reading  for  incorrigible 
ters.  If  a  steady  course  of  these  did  not  bring 
out  of  their  nonsenses,  nothing  short  of  hangii 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  253 

would.     Take  this  as  a  sample,  hit  on  by  opening 
at  random :  — 

"  Rottenness  my  bones  possest ; 
Trembling  fear  possessed  me  ; 
I  that  troublous  day  might  rest : 
For,  when  his  approaches  be 
Onward  to  the  people  made, 
His  strong  troops  will  them  invade." 

Southwell  is,  if  possible,  worse.  He  paraphrases 
David,  putting  into  his  mouth  such  punning  con- 
ceits as  "  fears  are  my  feres,"  and  in  his  "  Saint 
Peter's  Complaint"  makes  that  rashest  and 
shortest-spoken  of  thf-  Apostles  drawl  through 
thirty  pages  of  maudlin  repentance,  in  which  the 
distinctions  between  the  north  and  northeast  sides 
of  a  sentimentality  are  worthy  of  Duns  Scotus.  It 
does  not  follow,  that,  because  a  man  is  hanged  for 
his  faith,  he  is  able  to  write  good  verses.  We 
would  almost  match  the  fortitude  that  quails  not  at 
the  good  Jesuit's  poems  with  his  own  which  carried 
him  serenely  to  the  fatal  tree.  The  stuff  of  which 
poets  are  made,  whether  finer  or  not,  is  of  a  very 
different  fibre  from  that  which  is  used  in  the  tough 
fabric  of  martyrs.  It  is  time  that  an  earnest  pro- 
test should  be  uttered  against  the  wrong  done  to 
the  religious  sentiment  by  the  greater  part  of  what 
is  called  religious  poetry,  but  which  is  commonly  a 
painful  something  misnamed  by  the  noun  and  mis- 
qualified  by  the  adjective.  To  dilute  David,  and 
make  doggerel  of  that  majestic  prose  of  the  Proph- 
ets which  has  the  glow  and  wide -orbited  metre 
of  constellations,  may  be  a  useful  occupation  to 
keep  country-gentlemen  out  of  litigation  or  retired 


254  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

clergymen  from  polemics ;  but  to  regard  these 
metrical  mechanics  as  sacred  because  nobody  wishes 
to  toiich  them,  as  meritorious  because  no  one  can 
be  merry  in  their  company,  —  to  rank  them  in  the 
same  class  with  those  ancient  songs  of  the  Church, 
sweet  with  the  breath  of  saints,  sparkling  with  the 
tears  of  forgiven  penitents,  and  warm  with  the 
fervor  of  martyrs,  —  nay,  to  set  them  up  beside 
such  poems  as  those  of  Herbert,  composed  in  the 
upper  chambers  of  the  soul  that  open  toward  the 
sun's  rising,  is  to  confound  piety  with  dulness,  and 
the  manna  of  heaven  with  its  sickening  namesake 
from  the  apothecary's  drawer.  The  "  Enchiridion  " 
of  Quarles  is  hardly  worthy  of  the  author  of  the 
"  Emblems,"  and  is  by  no  means  an  unattainable 
book  in  other  editions,  —  nor  a  matter  of  heart- 
break, if  it  were.  Of  the  dramatic  works  of  Mars- 
ton  and  Lilly  it  is  enough  to  say  that  they  are  truly 
works  to  the  reader,  but  in  no  sense  dramatic,  nor, 
as  literature,  worth  the  paper  they  blot.  They  seem 
to  have  been  deemed  worthy  of  republication  be- 
cause they  were  the  contemporaries  of  true  poets ; 
and  if  all  the  Tuppers  of  the  nineteenth  century 
will  buy  their  plays  on  the  same  principle,  the  sale 
will  be  a  remunerative  one.  It  was  worth  while, 
perhaps,  to  reprint  Lovelace,  if  only  to  show  what 
dull  verses  may  be  written  by  a  man  who  has  made 
one  lucky  hit.  Of  the  "Early  English  Poetry," 
nine  tenths  had  better  never  have  been  printed  at 
all,  and  the  other  tenth  reprinted  by  an  editor  who 
had  some  vague  suspicion,  at  least,  of  what  they 
meant.  The  Homer  of  Chapman  is  so  precious  a 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  255 

gift,  that  we  are  ready  to  forgive  all  Mr.  Smith's 
shortcomings  in  consideration  of  it.  It  is  a  vast 
placer,  full  of  nuggets  for  the  philologist  and  the 
lover  of  poetry. 

Having  now  run  cursorily  through  the  series  of 
Mr.  Smith's  reprints,  we  come  to  the  closer  ques- 
tion of  How  are  they  edited  ?  Whatever  the  merit 
of  the  original  works,  the  editors,  whether  self- 
elected  or  chosen  by  the  publisher,  should  be  ac- 
curate and  scholarly.  The  editing  of  the  Homer 
we  can  heartily  commend  ;  and  Dr.  Rimbault,  who 
carried  the  works  of  Overbury  through  the  press, 
has  done  his  work  well ;  but  the  other  volumes  of 
the  Library  are  very  creditable  neither  to  English 
scholarship  nor  to  English  typography.  The  Intro- 
ductions to  some  of  them  are  enough  to  make  us 
think  that  we  are  fallen  to  the  necessity  of  re- 
printing our  old  authors  because  the  art  of  writ- 
ing correct  and  graceful  English  has  been  lost. 
William  B.  Turnbull,  Esq.,  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  Bar- 
rister at  Law,  says,  for  instance,  in  his  Introduction 
to  Southwell:  "There  was  resident  at  Uxendon, 
near  Harrow  on  the  Hill,  in  Middlesex,  a  Catholic 
family  of  the  name  of  Bellamy  whom  [which] 
Southwell  was  in  the  habit  of  visiting  and  provid- 
ing with  religious  instruction  when  he  exchanged 
his  ordinary  [ordinarily]  close  confinement  for 
a  purer  atmosphere  "  (p.  xxii.)  Again,  (p.  xxii,) 
"  He  had,  in  this  manner,  for  six  years,  pursued, 
with  very  great  success,  the  objects  of  his  mission, 
when  these  were  abruptly  terminated  by  his  foul 
betrayal  into  the  hands  of  his  enemies  in  1592.' 


256  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

We  should  like  to  have  Mr.  Turnbull  explain  how 
the  objects  of  a  mission  could  be  terminated  by  a 
betrayal,  however  it  might  be  with  the  mission  it- 
self. From  the  many  similar  flowers  in  the  Intro- 
duction to  Mather's  "  Providences,"  by  Mr.  George 
Offor,  (in  whom,  we  fear,  we  recognize  a  country- 
man,) we  select  the  following :  "  It  was  at  this 
period  when,  [that,]  oppressed  by  the  ruthless  hand 
of  persecution,  our  Pilgrim  Fathers,  threatened 
with  torture  and  death,  succumbed  not  to  man,  but 
trusting  on  [in]  an  almighty  arm,  braved  the  dan- 
gers of  an  almost  unknown  ocean,  and  threw  them- 
selves into  the  arms  of  men  called  savages,  who 
proved  more  beneficent  than  national  Christians." 
To  whom  or  what  our  Pilgrim  Fathers  did  succumb, 
and  what  "  national  Christians  "  are,  we  leave,  with 
the  song  of  the  Sirens,  to  conjecture.  Speaking  of 
the  "Providences,"  Mr.  Offor  says,  that  "  they 
faithfully  delineate  the  state  of  public  opinion  two 
hundred  years  ago,  the  most  striking  feature  being 
an  implicit  faith  in  the  power  of  the  [in-]  visible 
world  to  hold  visible  intercourse  with  man  :  —  not 
the  angels  to  bless  poor  erring  mortals,  but  of  de- 
mons imparting  power  to  witches  and  warlocks  to 
injure,  terrify  and  destroy,"  —  a  sentence  which  we 
defy  any  witch  or  warlock,  though  he  were  Michael 
Scott  himself,  to  parse  with  the  astutest  demonic 
aid.  On  another  page,  he  says  of  Dr.  Mather,  that 
"he  was  one  of  the  first  divines  who  discovered 
that  very  many  strange  events,  which  were  con- 
sidered preternatural,  had  occurred  in  the  course 
of  nature  or  by  deceitful  juggling ;  that  the  Devil 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  257 

could  not  speak  English,  nor  prevail  with  Protes- 
tants ;  the  smell  of  herbs  alarms  the  Devil ;  that 
medicine  drives  out  Satan !  "  We  do  not  wonder 
that  Mr.  Offor  put  a  mark  of  exclamation  at  the  end 
of  this  surprising  sentence,  but  we  do  confess  our 
astonishment  that  the  vermilion  pencil  of  the  proof- 
reader suffered  it  to  pass  unchallenged.  Leaving  its 
bad  English  out  of  the  question,  we  find,  on  refer- 
ring to  Mather's  text,  that  he  was  never  guilty  of  the 
absurdity  of  believing  that  Satan  was  less  eloquent 
in  English  than  in  any  other  language ;  that  it  was 
the  British  (Welsh)  tongue  which  a  certain  demon 
whose  education  had  been  neglected  (not  the  Devil) 
could  not  speak ;  that  Mather  is  not  fool  enough  to 
say  that  the  Fiend  cannot  prevail  with  Protestants, 
nor  that  the  smell  of  herbs  alarms  him,  nor  that 
medicine  drives  him  out.  Anything  more  helplessly 
inadequate  than  Mr.  Offor's  preliminary  disserta- 
tion on  Witchcraft  we  never  read  ;  but  we  could 
hardly  expect  much  from  an  editor  whose  citations 
from  the  book  he  is  editing  show  that  he  had 
either  not  read  or  not  understood  it. 

Mr.  Offor  is  superbly  Protestant  and  iconoclas- 
tic, —  not  sparing,  as  we  have  seen,  even  Priscian's 
head  among  the  rest ;  but,  en  revanche,  Mr.  Turn- 
bull  is  ultramontane  beyond  the  editors  of  the  Ci- 
vilta  Cattolica.  He  allows  himself  to  say,  that, 
"after  Southwell's  death,  one  of  his  sisters,  a 
Catholic  in  heart,  but  timidly  and  blamably  sim- 
ulating heresy,  wrought,  with  some  relics  of  the 
martyr,  several  cures  on  persons  afflicted  with  des- 
perate and  deadly  diseases,  which  had  baffled  the 


258  LIBRARY   OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

skill  of  all  physicians."  Mr.  Turnbull  is,  we  sus- 
pect, a  recent  convert,  or  it  would  occur  to  him 
that  doctors  are  still  secure  of  a  lucrative  prac- 
tice in  countries  full  of  the  relics  of  greater  saints 
than  even  Southwell.  That  father  was  hanged 
(according  to  Protestants)  for  treason,  and  the 
relic  which  put  the  whole  pharmacopoeia  to  shame 
was,  if  we  mistake  not,  his  neckerchief.  But  what- 
ever the  merits  of  the  Jesuit  himself,  and  how- 
ever it  may  gratify  Mr.  Turnbull' s  catechumen- 
ical  enthusiasm  to  exalt  the  curative  properties  of 
this  integument  of  his,  even  at  the  expense  of 
Jesuits'  bark,  we  cannot  but  think  that  he  has 
shown  a  credulity  that  unfits  him  for  writing  a 
fair  narrative  of  his  hero's  life,  or  making  a  toler- 
ably just  estimate  of  his  verses.  It  is  possible, 
however,  that  these  last  seem  prosaic  as  a  necktie 
only  to  heretical  readers. 

We  have  singled  out  the  Introductions  of  Messrs. 
Turnbull  and  Offer  for  special  animadversion  be- 
cause they  are  on  the  whole  the  worst,  both  of 
them  being  offensively  sectarian,  while  that  of  Mr. 
Offor  in  particular  gives  us  almost  no  informa- 
tion whatever.  Some  of  the  others  are  not  with- 
out grave  faults,  chief  among  which  is  a  vague 
declamation,  especially  out  of  place  in  critical 
essays,  where  it  serves  only  to  weary  the  reader 
and  awaken  his  distrust.  In  his  Introduction  to 
Wither's  "  Hallelujah,"  for  instance,  Mr.  Farr  in- 
forms us  that  "nearly  all  the  best  poets  of  the 
latter  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  —  for  that  was 
the  period  when  the  Reformation  was  fully  es- 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  259 

tablished  —  and  the  whole  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury were  sacred  poets,"  and  that  "even  Shake- 
speare and  the  contemporary  dramatists  of  his 
age  sometimes  attuned  their  well-strung  harps  to 
the  songs  of  Zion."  Comment  on  statements  like 
these  would  be  as  useless  as  the  assertions  them- 
selves are  absurd.  •'-> 

We  have  quoted  these  examples  only  to  justify 
us  in  saying  that  Mr.  Smith  must  select  his  editors 
with  more  care  if  he  wishes  that  his  "Library 
of  Old  Authors  "  should  deserve  the  confidence 
and  thereby  gain  the  good  word  of  intelligent 
readers,  —  without  which  such  a  series  can  neither 
win  nor  keep  the  patronage  of  the  public.  It  is 
impossible  that  men  who  cannot  construct  an  Eng- 
lish sentence  correctly,  and  who  do  not  know  the 
value  of  clearness  in  writing,  should  be  able  to 
disentangle  the  knots  which  slovenly  printers  have 
tied  in  the  thread  of  an  old  author's  meaning; 
and  it  is  more  than  doubtful  whether  they  who  as- 
sert carelessly,  cite  inaccurately,  and  write  loosely 
are  not  by  nature  disqualified  for  doing  thoroughly 
what  they  undertake  to  do.  If  it  were  unreason- 
able to  demand  of  every  one  who  assumes  to  edit 
one  of  our  early  poets  the  critical  acumen,  the 
genial  sense,  the  illimitable  reading,  the  philologi- 
cal scholarship,  which  in  combination  would  alone 
make  the  ideal  editor,  it  is  not  presumptuous  to 
expect  some  one  of  these  qualifications  singly,  and 
we  have  the  right  to  insist  upon  patience  and  accu- 
racy, which  are  within  the  reach  of  every  one, 
and  without  which  all  the  others  are  wellnigh 


260  LIBRARY  OF   OLD  AUTHORS 

vain.  Now  to  this  virtue  of  accuracy  Mr.  Offor 
specifically  lays  claim  in  one  of  his  remarkable 
sentences.  "We  are  bound  to  admire,"  he  says, 
"  the  accuracy  and  beauty  of  this  specimen  of 
typography.  Following  in  the  path  of  my  late 
friend  William  Pickering,  our  publisher  rivals 
the  Aldine  and  Elzevir  presses,  which  have  been 
so  universally  admired."  We  should  think  that 
it  was  the  product  of  those  presses  which  had 
been  admired,  and  that  Mr.  Smith  presents  a 
still  worthier  object  of  admiration  when  he  con- 
trives to  follow  a  path  and  rival  a  press  at  the 
same  time.  But  let  that  pass ;  —  it  is  the  claim 
to  accuracy  which  we  dispute ;  and  we  deliberately 
affirm,  that,  so  far  as  we  are  able  to  judge  by 
the  volumes  we  have  examined,  no  claim  more 
unfounded  was  ever  set  up.  In  some  cases,  as 
we  shall  show  presently,  the  blunders  of  the  origi- 
nal work  have  been  followed  with  painful  accu- 
racy in  the  reprint ;  but  many  others  have  been 
added  by  the  carelessness  of  Mr.  Smith's  printers 
or  editors.  In  the  thirteen  pages  of  Mr.  Offer's 
own  Introduction  we  have  found  as  many  as  seven 
typographical  errors,  —  unless  some  of  them  are 
to  be  excused  on  the  ground  that  Mr.  Offor's  stud- 
ies have  not  yet  led  him  into  those  arcana  where 
we  are  taught  such  recondite  mysteries  of  lan- 
guage as  that  verbs  agree  with  their  nominatives. 
In  Mr.  Farr's  Introduction  to  the  "  Hymns  and 
Songs"  nine  short  extracts  from  other  poems  of 
Wither  are  quoted,  and  in  these  we  have  found 
no  less  than  seven  misprints  or  false  readings 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  261 

which  materially  affect  the  sense.  Textual  in- 
accuracy is  a  grave  fault  in  the  new  edition  of 
an  old  poet;  and  Mr.  Farr  is  not  only  liable  to 
this  charge,  but  also  to  that  of  making  blunder- 
ing misstatements  which  are  calculated  to  mislead 
the  careless  or  uncritical  reader.  Infected  by  the 
absurd  cant  which  has  been  prevalent  for  the  last 
dozen  years  among  literary  sciolists,  he  says,  — 
"The  language  used  by  Wither  in  all  his  vari- 
ous works  —  whether  secular  or  sacred  —  is  pure 
Saxon."  Taken  literally,  this  assertion  is  mani- 
festly ridiculous,  and,  allowing  it  every  possible 
limitation,  it  is  not  only  untrue  of  Wither,  but 
of  every  English  poet,  from  Chaucer  down.  The 
translators  of  our  Bible  made  use  of  the  German 
version,  and  a  poet  versifying  the  English  Scrip- 
tures would  therefore  be  likely  to  use  more  words 
of  Teutonic  origin  than  in  his  original  composi- 
tions. But  no  English  poet  can  write  English 
poetry  except  in  English,  —  that  is,  in  that  com- 
pound of  Teutonic  and  Romanic  which  derives  its 
heartiness  and  strength  from  the  one  and  its  ca- 
norous elegance  from  the  other.  The  Saxon  lan- 
guage does  not  sing,  and,  though  its  tough  mor- 
tar serve  to  hold  together  the  less  compact  Latin 
words,  porous  with  vowels,  it  is  to  the  Latin  that 
our  verse  owes  majesty,  harmony,  variety,  and 
the  capacity  for  rhyme.  A  quotation  of  six  lines 
from  Wither  ends  at  the  top  of  the  very  page 
on  which  Mr.  Farr  lays  down  his  extraordinary 
dictum,  and  we  will  let  this  answer  him,  Itali- 
cizing the  words  of  Romance  derivation:  — 


262  LIBRARY  OF   OLD  AUTHORS 

"  Her  true  beauty  leaves  behind 
Apprehensions  in  the  mind, 
Of  more  sweetness  than  all  art 
Or  inventions  can  impart ; 
Thoughts  too  deep  to  be  expressed, 
And  too  strong  to  be  suppressed." 

Mr.  Halliwell,  at  the  close  of  his  Preface  to  the 
Works  of  Marston,  (vol.  i.  p.  xxii,)  says,  "  The 
dramas  now  collected  together  are  reprinted  abso- 
lutely from  the  early  editions,  which  were  placed 
in  the  hands  of  our  printers,  who  thus  had  the  ad- 
vantage of  following  them  without  the  intervention 
of  a  transcriber.  They  are  given  as  nearly  as  pos- 
sible in  their  original  state,  the  only  moderniza- 
tions attempted  consisting  in  the  alternations  of  the 
letters  i  andj,  and  u  and  v,  the  retention  of  which  " 
(does  Mr.  Halliwell  mean  the  letters  or  the  "  alter- 
nations "  ?)  "  would  have  answered  no  useful  pur- 
pose, while  it  would  have  unnecessarily  perplexed 
the  modern  reader." 

This  is  not  very  clear ;  but  as  Mr.  Halliwell  is 
a  member  of  several  learned  foreign  societies,  and 
especially  of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy,  perhaps  it 
would  be  unfair  to  demand  that  he  should  write 
clear  English.  As  one  of  Mr.  Smith's  editors,  it 
was  to  be  expected  that  he  should  not  write  it  id- 
iomatically. Some  malign  constellation  (Taurus, 
perhaps,  whose  inf  aust  aspect  may  be  supposed  to 
preside  over  the  makers  of  bulls  and  blunders) 
seems  to  have  been  in  conjunction  with  heavy  Sat- 
urn when  the  Library  was  projected.  At  the  top 
of  the  same  page  from  which  we  have  made  our 
quotation,  Mr.  Halliwell  speaks  of  "  conveying  a 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  263 

favorable  impression  on  modern  readers."  It  was 
surely  to  no  such  phrase  as  this  that  Ensign  Pistol 
alluded  when  he  said,  "Convey  the  wise  it  call." 

A  literal  reprint  of  an  old  author  may  be  of  value 
in  two  ways  :  the  orthography  may  in  certain  cases 
indicate  the  ancient  pronunciation,  or  it  may  put 
us  on  a  scent  which  shall  lead  us  to  the  burrow  of 
a  word  among  the  roots  of  language.  But  in  order 
to  this,  it  surely  is  not  needful  to  undertake  the  re- 
production of  all  the  original  errors  of  the  press  ; 
and  even  were  it  so,  the  proofs  of  carelessness  in 
the  editorial  department  are  so  glaring,  that  we 
are  left  in  doubt,  after  all,  if  we  may  congratulate 
ourselves  on  possessing  all  these  sacred  blunders  of 
the  Elizabethan  type-setters  in  their  integrity,  and 
without  any  debasement  of  modern  alloy.  If  it  be 
gratifying  to  know  that  there  lived  stupid  men  be- 
fore our  contemporary  Agamemnons  in  that  kind, 
yet  we  demand  absolute  accuracy  in  the  report  of 
the  phenomena  in  order  to  arrive  at  anything  like 
safe  statistics.  For  instance,  we  find  (vol.  i.  p. 
89)  "AcTUS  SECUNDUS,  SCENA  PRIMUS,"  and 
(vol.  iii.  p.  174)  "  exit  ambo"  and  we  are  inter- 
ested to  know  that  in  a  London  printing-house,  two 
centuries  and  a  half  ago,  there  was  a  philanthro- 
pist who  wished  to  simplify  the  study  of  the  Latin 
language  by  reducing  all  the  nouns  to  one  gender 
and  all  the  verbs  to  one  number.  Had  his  emanci- 
pated theories  of  grammar  prevailed,  how  much 
easier  would  that  part  of  boys  which  cherubs  want 
have  found  the  school-room  benches  !  How  would 
birchen  bark,  as  an  educational  tonic,  have  fallen 


264  LIBRARY   OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

in  repute  !  How  white  would  have  been  the  (now 
black-and-blue)  memories  of  Dr.  Busby  and  so 
many  other  educational  lictors,  who,  with  their 
bundles  of  rods,  heralded  not  alone  the  consuls,  but 
all  other  Roman  antiquities  to  us  !  We  dare  not, 
however,  indulge  in  the  grateful  vision,  since  there 
are  circumstances  which  lead  us  to  infer  that  Mr. 
Halliwell  himself  (member  though  he  be  of  so 
many  learned  societies)  has  those  vague  notions  of 
the  speech  of  ancient  Rome  which  are  apt  to  pre- 
vail in  regions  which  count  not  the  betula  in  their 
Flora.  On  page  xv  of  his  Preface,  he  makes 
Drummond  say  that  Ben  Jonson  "  was  dilated " 
(delated,  —  Gifford  gives  it  in  English,  accused) 
"  to  the  king  by  Sir  James  Murray,"  —  Ben,  whose 
corpulent  person  stood  in  so  little  need  of  that  ma- 
licious increment ! 

What  is  Mr.  Halliwell's  conception  of  editorial 
duty  ?  As  we  read  along,  and  the  once  fair  com- 
plexion of  the  margin  grew  more  and  more  pitted 
with  pencil-marks,  like  that  of  a  bad  proof-sheet, 
we  began  to  think  that  he  was  acting  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  every  man  his  own  washerwoman,  —  that 
he  was  making  blunders  of  set  purpose,  (as  teach- 
ers of  languages  do  in  their  exercises,)  in  order 
that  we  might  correct  them  for  ourselves,  and  so 
fit  us  in  time  to  be  editors  also,  and  members  of 
various  learned  societies,  even  as  Mr.  Halliwell 
himself  is.  We  fancied,  that,  magnanimously  wav- 
ing aside  the  laurel  with  which  a  grateful  posterity 
crowned  General  Wade,  he  wished  us  "  to  see  these 
roads  before  they  were  made,"  and  develop  our  in- 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  265 

tellectual  muscles  in  getting  over  them.  But  no  ; 
Mr.  Halliwell  has  appended  notes  to  his  edition, 
and  among  them  are  some  which  correct  misprints, 
and  therefore  seem  to  imply  that  he  considers  that 
service  as  belonging  properly  to  the  editorial  func- 
tion. We  are  obliged,  then,  to  give  up  our  theory 
that  his  intention  was  to  make  every  reader  an  ed- 
itor, and  to  suppose  that  he  wished  rather  to  show 
how  disgracefully  a  book  might  be  edited  and  yet 
receive  the  commendation  of  professional  critics 
who  read  with  the  ends  of  their  fingers.  If  this 
were  his  intention,  Marston  himself  never  published 
so  biting  a  satire. 

Let  us  look  at  a  few  of  the  intricate  passages,  to 
help  us  through  which  Mr.  Halliwell  lends  us  the 
light  of  his  editorial  lantern.  In  the  Induction  to 
"What  you  Will "  occurs  the  striking  and  unusual 
phrase,  "Now  out  up-pont,"  and  Mr.  Halliwell 
favors  us  with  the  following  note:  "Page  221, 
line  10.  Up-pont.  —  That  is,  upon  't."  Again  in 
the  same  play  we  find,  — 

"  Let  twattliug  fame  cheatd  others  rest, 
I  um  no  dish  for  rumors  feast." 

Of  course,  it  should  read,  — 

"Let  twattling  [twaddling]  Fame  cheate  others'  rest, 
I  am  no  dish  for  Rumor's  feast." 

Mr.  Halliwell  comes  to  our  assistance  thus:  "Page 
244,  line  21,  [22  it  should  be,]  /  urn,  —  a  printer's 
error  for  /  am."  Dignus  vindice  nodus  !  Five 
lines  above,  we  have  "  whole  "  for  "  who  '11,"  and 
four  lines  below,  "helmeth"  for  "whelmeth";  but 


266  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

Mr.  Halliwell  vouchsafes  no  note.  In  the  "  Fawn  " 
we  read,  "  Wise  neads  use  few  words,"  and  the 
editor  says  in  a  note,  "a  misprint  for  heads" I 
Kind  Mr.  Halliwell! 

Having  given  a  few  examples  of  our  "  Editor's  " 
corrections,  we  proceed  to  quote  a  passage  or  two 
which,  it  is  to  be  presumed,  he  thought  perfectly 
clear. 

"  A  man  can  skarce  put  on  a  tuckt-np  cap, 
A  button'd  frizado  sute,  skarce  eate  good  meate, 
Anchoves,  caviare,  but  hee's  satyred 
And  term'd  phantasticall.     By  the  muddy  spawne 
Of  slymie  nenghtes,  when  troth,  phantasticknesse 
That  which  the  naturaU  sophysters  tearme 
Phantusia  incomplexa  —  is  a  function 
Even  of  the  bright  immortal  part  of  man. 
It  is  the  common  passe,  the  sacred  dore, 
Unto  the  prive  chamber  of  the  soule ; 
That  bar'd,  nought  passeth  past  the  baser  court 
Of  outward  scenee  by  it  th'  inamorate 
Most  lively  thinkes  he  sees  the  absent  beauties 
Of  his  lov'd  mistres."     (Vol.  i.  p.  241.) 

In  this  case,  also,  the  true  readings  are  clear 
enough : — 


"  And  termed  fantastical  by  the  muddy  spawn 
Of  slimy  newts"; 


and 


"...  past  the  baser  court 
Of  outward  sense  "  ;  — 


but,  if  anything  was  to  be  explained,  why  are  we 
here  deserted  by  our  jida  compagna?  Again, 
(vol.  ii.  pp.  55,  56,)  we  read,  "  This  Granuffo  is 
a  right  wise  good  lord,  a  man  of  excellent  discourse, 
and  never  speakes  his  signes  to  me,  and  men  of 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  267 

profound  reach  instruct  aboundantly ;  hee  begges 
suites  with  signes,  gives  thanks  with  signes,"  etc. 
This  Granuffo  is  qualified  among  the  "Interloc- 
utors "  as  "a  silent  lord,"  and  what  fun  there  is 
in  the  character  (which,  it  must  be  confessed,  is 
rather  of  a  lenten  kind)  consists  in  his  genius  for 
saying  nothing.  It  is  plain  enough  that  the  pas- 
sage should  read,  "  a  man  of  excellent  discourse, 
and  never  speaks ;  his  signs  to  me  and  men  of  pro- 
found reach  instruct  abundantly,"  etc. 

In  both  the  passages  we  have  quoted,  it  is  not 
difficult  for  the  reader  to  set  the  text  right.  But 
if  not  difficult  for  the  reader,  it  should  certainly 
not  have  been  so  for  the  editor,  who  should  have 
done  what  Broome  was  said  to  have  done  for  Pope 
in  his  Homer,  —  "  gone  before  and  swept  the  way." 
An  edition  of  an  English  author  ought  to  be  intel- 
ligible to  English  readers,  and,  if  the  editor  do  not 
make  it  so,  he  wrongs  the  old  poet,  for  two  cen- 
turies lapt  in  lead,  to  whose  works  he  undertakes 
to  play  the  gentleman-usher.  A  play  written  in 
our  own  tongue  should  not  be  as  tough  to  us  as 
JEschylus  to  a  ten  years'  graduate,  nor  do  we  wish 
to  be  reduced  to  the  level  of  a  chimpanzee,  and 
forced  to  gnaw  our  way  through  a  thick  shell  of 
misprints  and  mispointings  only  to  find  (as  is  gen- 
erally the  case  with  Marston)  a  rancid  kernel  of 
meaning  after  all.  But  even  Marston  sometimes 
deviates  into  poetry,  as  a  man  who  wrote  in  that 
age  could  hardly  help  doing,  and  one  of  the  few 
instances  of  it  is  in  a  speech  of  Erichtho,  in  the 
first  scene  of  the  fourth  act  of  "  Sophonisba," 


268  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

(vol.  i.  p.  197,)  which  Mr.  Halliwell  presents  to 
us  in  this  shape :  — 

"  hardby  the  reverent  (! )  ruines 
Of  a  once  glorious  temple  rear'd  to  Jove 
Whose  very  ruhbish        .... 
*        .        .         .        .        yet  beares 
A  deathlesse  majesty,  though  now  quite  rac'd,  [razed,] 
Hurl'd  down  by  wrath  and  lust  of  impious  kings, 
So  that  where  holy  Flamins  [Flamens]  wont  to  sing 
Sweet  hymnes  to  Heaven,  there  the  daw  and  crow, 
The  ill-voyc'd  raven,  and  still  chattering  pye, 
Send  out  ungratefull  sounds  and  loathsome  filth ; 
Where  statues  and  Joves  acts  were  vively  limbs, 

Where  tombs  and  beantious  urnes  of  well  dead  men 
Stood  in  assured  rest,"  etc. 

The  last  verse  and  a  half  are  worthy  of  Chapman ; 
but  why  did  not  Mr.  Halliwell,  who  explains  up- 
pont  and  /  urn,  change  "  Joves  acts  were  vively 
limbs  "  to  "  Jove's  acts  were  lively  limned,"  which 
was  unquestionably  what  Marston  wrote  ? 

In  the  "  Scourge  of  Villanie,"  (vol.  iii.  p.  252,) 
there  is  a  passage  which  till  lately  had  a  modern 
application  in  America,  though  happily  archaic  in 
England,  which  Mr.  Halliwell  suffers  to  stand 
thus :  — 

"  Once  Albion  lived  in  such  a  cruel  age 
Than  man  did  hold  by  servile  vilenage  : 
Poore  brats  were  slaves  of  bondmen  that  were  borne, 
And  marted,  sold :  but  that  rude  law  is  torne 
And  disannuld,  as  too  too  inhumane." 

This  should  read  — 

"  Man  man  did  hold  in  servile  villanage ; 
Poor  brats  were  slaves  (of  bondmen  that  were  born)  " ; 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  269 

and  perhaps  some  American  poet  will  one  day  write 
in  the  past  tense  similar  verses  of  the  barbarity  of 
his  forefathers. 

We  will  give  one  more  scrap  of  Mr.  Halliwell's 

text :  — 

"  Yfaith,  why  then,  caprichious  mirth, 
Skip,  light  moriscoes,  in  our  frolick  blond, 
Flagg'd  veines,  sweete,  plump  with  fresh-infused  joyes!  " 

which  Marston,  doubtless,  wrote  thus :  — 

"  I'faith,  why  then,  capricious  Mirth, 
Skip  light  moriscoes  in  our  frolic  blood  ! 
Flagg'd  veins,  swell  plump  with  iresL-inf  used  joya !  " 

We  have  quoted  only  a  few  examples  from 
among  the  scores  that  we  had  marked,  and  against 
such  a  style  of  "  editing  "  we  invoke  the  shade  of 
Marston  himself.  In  the  Preface  to  the  Second 
Edition  of  the  "  Fawn,"  he  says,  "  Reader,  know  I 
have  perused  this  coppy,  to  make  some  satisfaction 
for  the  first  faulty  impression  ;  yet  so  argent  hath 
been  my  business  that  some  errors  have  styll passed, 
which  thy  discretion  may  amend." 

Literally,  to  be  sure,  Mr.  Halliwell  has  availed 
himself  of  the  permission  of  the  poet,  in  leaving  all 
emendation  to  the  reader ;  but  certainly  he  has 
been  false  to  the  spirit  of  it  in  his  self-assumed 
office  of  editor.  The  notes  to  explain  up-pont  and 
/  um  give  us  a  kind  of  standard  of  the  highest 
intelligence  which  Mr.  Halliwell  dares  to  take  for 
granted  in  the  ordinary  reader.  Supposing  this 
nousometer  of  his  to  be  a  centigrade,  in  what  hith- 
erto uiiconceived  depths  of  cold  obstruction  can  he 
find  his  zero-point  of  entire  idiocy?  The  expansive 


270  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

force  of  average  wits  cannot  be  reckoned  upon,  as 
we  see,  to  drive  them  up  as  far  as  the  temperate 
degree  of  misprints  in  one  syllable,  and  those,  too, 
in  their  native  tongue.  A  fortiori,  then,  Mr. 
Halliwell  is  bound  to  lend  us  the  aid  of  his  great 
learning  wherever  his  author  has  introduced  foreign 
words  and  the  old  printers  have  made  pie  of  them. 
In  a  single  case  he  has  accepted  his  responsibility 
as  dragoman,  and  the  amount  of  his  success  is  not 
such  as  to  give  us  any  poignant  regret  that  he  has 
everywhere  else  left  us  to  our  own  devices.  On 
p.  119,  vol.  ii.,  Francischina,  a  Dutchwoman, 
exclaims,  "  O,  mine  aderliver  love."  Here  is  Mr. 
Halliwell's  note  :  "Aderliver.  —  This  is  the  speak- 
er's error  for  alder-liever,  the  best  beloved  by  all." 
Certainly  not  "  the  speaker's  error,"  for  Marston 
was  no  such  fool  as  intentionally  to  make  a  Dutch- 
woman blunder  in  her  own  language.  But  is  it  an 
error  for  alderliever  f  No,  but  for  alderliefster. 
Mr.  Halliwell  might  have  found  it  in  many  an  old 
Dutch  song.  For  example,  No.  96  of  Hoffmann 
von  Fallersleben's  "  Niederlandische  Volkslieder  " 
begins  thus :  — 

"  Mijn  hert  altijt  heeft  verlanghen 
Naer  u,  die  alderliefste  mijn." 

But  does  the  word  mean  "  best  beloved  by  all "  ? 
No  such  thing,  of  course ;  but  "  best  beloved  of 
all,"  —  that  is,  by  the  speaker. 

In  "  Antonio  and  Mellida  "  (vol.  i.  pp.  50,  51) 
occur  some  Italian  verses,  and  here  we  hoped  to 
fare  better;  for  Mr.  Halliwell  (as  we  learn  from 
the  title-page  of  his  Dictionary)  is  a  member  of 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  271 

the  "  Reale  Academia  di  Firenze"  This  is  the 
Accademia  della  Crusca,  founded  for  the  conserva- 
tion of  the  Italian  language  in  its  purity,  and  it  is 
rather  a  fatal  symptom  that  Mr.  Halliwell  should 
indulge  in  the  heresy  of  spelling  Accademia  with 
only  one  c.  But  let  us  see  what  our  Delia  Orus- 
can's  notions  of  conserving  are.  Here  is  a  speci- 
men :  — 

"Bassiammi,  coglier  1'  aura  odorata 
Che  in  sua  neggia  in  quello  dolce  Libra. 
Dammi  pimpero  del  tuo  gradit'  amore." 

It  is  clear  enough  that  we  ought  to  read,  — 

"  Lasciami  coglier,  .  .  .  Che  ha  sua  seggia,  .  .  .  Dammi  1'  im- 
pero." 

A  Delia  Cruscan  academician  might  at  least  have 
corrected  by  his  dictionary  the  spelling  and  number 
of  labra. 

We  think  that  we  have  sustained  our  indictment 
of  Mr.  Halliwell's  text  with  ample  proof.  The  title 
of  the  book  should  have  been,  "  The  Works  of  John 
Marston,  containing  all  the  Misprints  of  the  origi- 
nal Copies,  together  with  a  few  added  for  the  first 
Time  in  this  Edition,  the  whole  carefully  let  alone 
by  James  Orchard  Halliwell,  F.  R.  S.,  F.  S.  A." 
It  occurs  to  us  that  Mr.  Halliwell  may  be  also  a 
Fellow  of  the  Geological  Society,  and  may  have 
caught  from  its  members  the  enthusiasm  which 
leads  him  to  attach  so  extraordinary  a  value  to 
every  goose-track  of  the  Elizabethan  formation.  It 
is  bad  enough  to  be,  as  Marston  was,  one  of  those 
middling  poets  whom  neither  gods  nor  men  nor 
columns  (Horace  had  never  seen  a  newspaper) 


272  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

tolerate ;  but,  really,  even  they  do  not  deserve  the 
frightful  retribution  of  being  reprinted  by  a  Halli- 
well. 

We  have  said  that  we  could  not  feel  even  the 
dubious  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  the  blunders 
of  the  old  copies  had  been  faithfully  followed  in  the 
reprinting.  We  see  reason  for  doubting  whether 
Mr.  Halliwell  ever  read  the  proof-sheets.  In  his 
own  notes  we  have  found  several  mistakes.  For 
instance,  he  refers  to  p.  159  when  he  means  p.  153 ; 
he  cites  "  I,  but  her  life"  instead  of  "  lip  " ;  and 
he  makes  Spenser  speak  of  "  old  Pithonus."  Mar- 
ston  is  not  an  author  of  enough  importance  to  make 
it  desirable  that  we  should  be  put  in  possession  of 
all  the  corrupted  readings  of  his  text,  were  such 
a  thing  possible  even  with  the  most  minute  pains- 
taking, and  Mr.  Halliwell's  edition  loses  its  only 
claim  to  value  the  moment  a  doubt  is  cast  upon 
the  accuracy  of  its  inaccuracies.  It  is  a  matter  of 
special  import  to  us  (whose  means  of  access  to 
originals  are  exceedingly  limited)  that  the  English 
editors  of  our  old  authors  should  be  faithful  and 
trustworthy,  and  we  have  singled  out  Mr.  Halli- 
well's Marston  for  particular  animadversion  only 
because  we  think  it  on  the  whole  the  worst  edition 
we  ever  saw  of  any  author. 

Having  exposed  the  condition  in  which  our  editor 
has  left  the  text,  we  proceed  to  test  his  competency 
in  another  respect,  by  examining  some  of  the  em- 
endations and  explanations  of  doubtful  passages 
which  he  proposes.  These  are  very  few ;  but  had 
they  been  even  fewer,  they  had  been  too  many. 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  273 

Among  the  dramatis  personce,  of  the  "  Fawn," 
as  we  said  before,  occurs  "  Granuffo,  a  silent  lord." 
He  speaks  only  once  during  the  play,  and  that  in 
the  last  scene.  In  Act  I.  Scene  2,  Gonzago  says, 
speaking  to  Granuffo,  — 

"  Now,  sure,  thou  art  a  man 
Of  a  most  learned  scilence,  and  cue  whose  words 
Have  bin  most  pretious  to  me.' ' 

This  seems  quite  plain,  but  Mr.  Halliwell  anno- 
tates thus :  "  /Scilence. — Query,  science  ?  The  com- 
mon reading,  silence,  may,  however,  be  what  is  in- 
tended." That  the  spelling  should  have  troubled 
Mr.  Halliwell  is  remarkable ;  for  elsewhere  we  find 
"  god-boy  "  for  "  good-bye,"  "  seace  "  for  "  cease," 
"  bodies  "  for  "  boddice,"  "  pollice  "  for  "  policy," 
"pitittying"  for  "pitying,"  "scence  "  for  "sense," 
"  Misenzius  "  for  "  Mezentius,"  "  Ferazes  "  for 
"  Ferrarese,"  —  and  plenty  beside,  equally  odd. 
That  he  should  have  doubted  the  meaning  is  no 
less  strange;  for  on  p.  41  of  the  same  play  we 
read,  "  My  Lord  Granuffo,  you  may  likewise  stay, 
for  I  know  you?l  say  nothing"  —  on  pp.  55,  56, 
"  This  Granuffo  is  a  right  wise  good  lord,  a  man  of 
excellent  discourse  and  never  speaks"  —  and  on 
p.  94,  we  find  the  following  dialogue :  — 

"  Gon.  My  Lord  Granuffo,  this  Fawne  is  an  excellent  fellow. 

"-Don.  Silence. 

"  Gon.  I  warrant  you  for  my  lord  here." 

In  the  same  play  (p.  44)  are  these  lines :  — 

"  I  apt  for  love  ? 
Let  lazy  idlenes  fild  full  of  wine 
Heated  with  meates,  high  fedde  with  lustfull  ease 
Goe  dote  on  culler  [color].     As  for  me,  why,  death  a  sence, 
I  court  the  ladie  ?  " 


274  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

This  is  Mr.  Halliwell's  note :  "  Death  a  sence.  — 
*  Earth  a  sense,'  ed.  1633.  Mr.  Dilke  suggests : 
'For  me,  why.  earth's  as  sensible.'  The  original 
is  not  necessarily  corrupt.  It  may  mean,  —  why, 
you  might  as  well  think  Death  was  a  sense,  one  of 
the  senses.  See  a  like  phrase  at  p.  77."  What 
help  we  should  get  by  thinking  Death  one  of  the 
senses,  it  would  demand  another  CEdipus  to  un- 
riddle. Mr.  Halliwell  can  astonish  us  no  longer, 
but  we  are  surprised  at  Mr.  Dilke,  the  very  com- 
petent editor  of  the  "  Old  English  Plays,"  1815. 
From  him  we  might  have  hoped  for  better  things. 
"  Death  o'  sense !  "  is  an  exclamation.  Through- 
out these  volumes  we  find  a  for  o',  —  as,  "a  clock" 
for  "  o'clock,"  "  a  the  side  "  for  "  o'  the  side."  A 
similar  exclamation  is  to  be  found  in  three  other 
places  in  the  same  play,  where  the  sense  is  obvious. 
Mr.  Halliwell  refers  to  one  of  them  on  p.  77, — 
"  Death  a  man  !  is  she  delivered  ?  "  The  others 
are,  —  **  Death  a  justice  !  are  we  in  Normandy  ?  " 
(p.  98);  and  "Death  a  discretion!  if  I  should 
prove  a  foole  now,"  or,  as  given  by  Mr.  Halliwell, 
"  Death,  a  discretion !  "  Now  let  us  apply  Mr. 
Halliwell's  explanation.  "  Death  a  man  !  "  you 
might  as  well  think  Death  was  a  man,  that  is,  one 
of  the  men !  —  or  a  discretion,  that  is,  one  of  the 
discretions  !  —  or  a  justice,  that  is,  one  of  the  quo- 
rum !  We  trust  Mr.  Halliwell  may  never  have  the 
editing  of  Bob  Acres's  imprecations.  "  Odd's  trig- 
gers ! "  he  would  say,  "  that  is,  as  odd  as,  or  as 
strange  as,  triggers." 

VoL    iii.   p.    77,  "the  vote-killing  mandrake." 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  275 

Mr.  Halliwell's  note  is,  "  Vote-killing.  — '  Voice- 
killing,'  ed.  1613.  It  may  well  be  doubted  whether 
either  be  the  correct  reading."  He  then  gives  a 
familiar  citation  from  Browne's  "  Vulgar  Errors." 
"  Vote-killing  "  may  be  a  mere  misprint  for  "  note- 
killing  ;  "  but  "  voice-killing "  is  certainly  the  bet- 
ter reading.  Either,  however,  makes  sense.  Al- 
though Sir  Thomas  Browne  does  not  allude  to  the 
deadly  property  of  the  mandrake's  shriek,  yet  Mr. 
Halliwell,  who  has  edited  Shakespeare,  might  have 
remembered  the 

"  Would  curses  kill,  as  doth  the  mandrake's  groan," 
(Second  Part  of  Henry  VI.,  Act  III.  Scene  2,) 

and  the  notes  thereon  in  the  variorum  edition.  In 
Jacob  Grimm's  "  Deutsche  Mythologie,"  (Vol.  II. 
p.  1154,)  under  the  word  Alraun,  may  be  found  a 
full  account  of  the  superstitions  concerning  the 
mandrake.  "  When  it  is  dug  up,  it  groans  and 
shrieks  so  dreadfully  that  the  digger  will  surely 
die.  One  must,  therefore,  before  sunrise  on  a  Fri- 
day, having  first  stopped  one's  ears  with  wax  or 
cotton-wool,  take  with  him  an  entirely  black  dog 
without  a  white  hair  on  him,  make  the  sign  of  the 
cross  three  times  over  the  alraun,  and  dig  about  it 
till  the  root  holds  only  by  thin  fibres.  Then  tie 
these  by  a  string  to  the  tail  of  the  dog,  show  him  a 
piece  of  bread,  and  run  away  as  fast  as  possible. 
The  dog  runs  eagerly  after  the  bread,  pulls  up  the 
root,  and  falls  stricken  dead  by  its  groan  of  pain." 
These,  we  believe,  are  the  only  instances  in  which 
Mr.  Halliwell  has  ventured  to  give  any  opinion 
upon  the  text,  except  as  to  a  palpable  misprint, 


276  LIBRARY   OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

here  and  there.  Two  of  these  we  have  already 
cited.  There  is  one  other,  —  "  p.  46,  line  10.  In- 
constant. —  An  error  for  inconstant."  Wherever 
there  is  a  real  difficulty,  he  leaves  us  in  the  lurch. 
For  example,  in  "  What  you  Will,"  he  prints  with- 
out comment,  — 

"  Ha !  he  mount  Chirall  on  the  wings  of  fame  !  " 

(Vol.  I.  p.  239.) 

which  should  be  "  mount  cheval,"  1  as  it  is  given  in 
Mr.  Dilke's  edition  (Old  English  Plays,  vol.  ii. 
p.  222).  We  cite  this,  not  as  the  worst,  but  the 
shortest,  example  at  hand. 

Some  of  Mr.  Halliwell's  notes  are  useful  and  in- 
teresting, —  as  that  on  "  keeling  the  pot,"  and  a 
few  others,  —  but  the  greater  part  are  utterly  use- 
less. He  thinks  it  necessary,  for  instance,  to  ex- 
plain that  "to  speak  pure  foole  is  in  sense  equiva- 
lent to  '  I  will  speak  like  a  pure  fool,'  "  —  that 
"  belkt  up  "  means  "  belched  up,"  —  that  "  apre- 
cocks  "  means  "  apricots."  He  has  notes  also  upon 
"  meal-mouthed,"  "  luxuriousnesse,"  "  termagant," 
"  fico,"  "  estro,"  "a nest  of  goblets,"  which  indicate 
either  that  the  "  general  reader "  is  a  less  intelli- 
gent person  in  England  than  in  America,  or  that 
Mr.  Halliwell's  standard  of  scholarship  is  very  low. 
We  ourselves,  from  our  limited  reading,  can  supply 
him  with  a  reference  which  will  explain  the  allu- 
sion to  the  "  Scotch  barnacle "  much  better  than 
his  citations  from  Sir  John  Maundeville  and  Gi- 
raldus  Cambrensis,  — namely,  note  8,  on  page  179 

1  "  Mount  our  Chevalls."  Dekker's  Northward  Ho  I  Works. 
Hi.  56. 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  277 

of  a  Treatise  on  Worms,  by  Dr.  Ramesey,  court 
physician  to  Charles  II. 

We  turn  now  to  Mr.  Hazlitt's  edition  of  Web- 
ster. We  wish  he  had  chosen  Chapman ;  for  Mr. 
Dyce's  Webster  is  hardly  out  of  print,  and,  we  be- 
lieve, has  just  gone  through  a  second  and  revised 
edition.  Webster  was  a  far  more  considerable  man 
than  Marston,  and  infinitely  above  him  in  genius. 
Without  the  poetic  nature  of  Marlowe,  or  Chap- 
man's somewhat  unwieldy  vigor  of  thought,  he  had 
that  inflammability  of  mind  which,  untempered  by 
a  solid  understanding,  made  his  plays  a  strange 
mixture  of  vivid  expression,  incoherent  declamation, 
dramatic  intensity,  and  extravagant  conception  of 
character.  He  was  not,  in  the  highest  sense  of  the 
word,  a  great  dramatist.  Shakespeare  is  the  only 
one  of  that  age.  Marlowe  had  a  rare  imagination, 
a  delicacy  of  sense  that  made  him  the  teacher  of 
Shakespeare  and  Milton  in  versification,  and  was, 
perhaps,  as  purely  a  poet  as  any  that  England  has 
produced ;  but  his  mind  had  no  balance-wheel. 
Chapman  abounds  in  splendid  enthusiasms  of  dic- 
tion, and  now  and  then  dilates  our  imaginations 
with  suggestions  of  profound  poetic  depth.  Ben 
Jonson  was  a  conscientious  and  intelligent  work- 
man, whose  plays  glow,  here  and  there,  with  the 
golden  pollen  of  that  poetic  feeling  with  which  his 
age  impregnated  all  thought  and  expression ;  but 
his  leading  characteristic,  like  that  of  his  great 
namesake,  Samuel,  was  a  hearty  common  sense, 
which  fitted  him  rather  to  be  a  great  critic  than  a 


278  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

great  poet.  He  had  a  keen  and  ready  eye  for  the 
comic  in  situation,  but  no  humor.  Fletcher  was  as 
much  a  poet  as  fancy  and  sentiment  can  make  any 
man.  Only  Shakespeare  wrote  comedy  and  tra- 
gedy with  truly  ideal  elevation  and  breadth.  Only 
Shakespeare  had  that  true  sense  of  humor  which, 
tike  the  universal  solvent  sought  by  the  alchemists, 
so  fuses  together  all  the  elements  of  a  character, 
(as  in  Falstaff,)  that  any  question  of  good  or  evil, 
of  dignified  or  ridiculous,  is  silenced  by  the  appre- 
hension of  its  thorough  humanity.  Rabelais  shows 
gleams  of  it  in  Panurge ;  but,  in  our  opinion,  no 
man  ever  possessed  it  in  an  equal  degree  with 
Shakespeare,  except  Cervantes ;  no  man  has  since 
shown  anything  like  an  approach  to  it,  (for  Mo- 
liere's  quality  was  comic  power  rather  than  humor,) 
except  Sterne,  Fielding,  and  perhaps  Richter. 
Only  Shakespeare  was  endowed  with  that  healthy 
equilibrium  of  nature  whose  point  of  rest  was  mid- 
way between  the  imagination  and  the  understand- 
ing, —  that  perfectly  unruffled  brain  which  reflected 
all  objects  with  almost  inhuman  impartiality, — 
that  outlook  whose  range  was  ecliptical,  dominating 
all  zones  of  human  thought  and  action,  —  that 
power  of  veri-similar  conception  which  could  take 
away  Richard  III.  from  History,  and  Ulysses  from 
Homer,  —  and  that  creative  faculty  whose  equal 
touch  is  alike  vivifying  in  Shallow  and  in  Lear. 
He  alone  never  seeks  in  abnormal  and  monstrous 
characters  to  evade  the  risks  and  responsibilities 
of  absolute  truthfulness,  nor  to  stimulate  a  jaded 
imagination  by  Caligulan  horrors  of  plot.  He  is 


LIBRARY   OF  OLD  AUTHORS  279 

never,  like  many  of  his  fellow-dramatists,  con- 
fronted with  unnatural  Frankensteins  of  his  own 
making,  whom  he  must  get  off  his  hands  as  best  he 
may.  Given  a  human  foible,  he  can  incarnate  it 
in  the  nothingness  of  Slender,  or  make  it  loom 
gigantic  through  the  tragic  twilight  of  Hamlet. 
We  are  tired  of  the  vagueness  which  classes  all  the 
Elizabethan  playwrights  together  as  "  great  drama- 
tists,"—  as  if  Shakespeare  did  not  differ  from  them 
in  kind  as  well  as  in  degree.  Fine  poets  some  of 
them  were ;  but  though  imagination  and  the  power 
of  poetic  expression  are,  singly,  not  uncommon 
gifts,  and  even  in  combination  not  without  secular 
examples,  yet  it  is  the  rarest  of  earthly  phenomena 
to  find  them  joined  with  those  faculties  of  percep- 
tion, arrangement,  and  plastic  instinct  in  the  lov- 
ing union  which  alone  makes  a  great  dramatic 
poet  possible.  We  suspect  that  Shakespeare  will 
long  continue  the  only  specimen  of  the  genus.  His 
contemporaries,  in  their  comedies,  either  force  what 
they  call  "  a  humor  "  till  it  becomes  fantastical,  or 
hunt  for  jokes,  like  rat-catchers,  in  the  sewers  of 
human  nature  and  of  language.  In  their  trage- 
dies they  become  heavy  without  grandeur,  like 
Jon  son,  or  mistake  the  stilts  for  the  cothurnus,  as 
Chapman  and  Webster  too  often  do.  Every  new 
edition  of  an  Elizabethan  dramatist  is  but  the  put- 
ting of  another  witness  into  the  box  to  prove  the 
inaccessibility  of  Shakespeare's  stand-point  as  poet 
and  artist. 

Webster's  most  famous  works  are  "  The  Duch- 
ess of  Malfy  "  and  "  Vittoria  Corombona,"  but  we 


280  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

are  strongly  inclined  to  call  "  The  Devil's  Law- 
Case"  his  best  play.  The  two  former  are  in  a 
great  measure  answerable  for  the  "  spasmodic " 
school  of  poets,  since  the  extravagances  of  a  man 
of  genius  are  as  sure  of  imitation  as  the  equable 
self-possession  of  his  higher  moments  is  incapable 
of  it.  Webster  had,  no  doubt,  the  primal  requisite 
of  a  poet,  imagination,  but  in  him  it  was  truly  un- 
tamed, and  Aristotle's  admirable  distinction  be- 
tween the  Horrible  and  the  Terrible  in  tragedy 
was  never  better  illustrated  and  confirmed  than  in 
the  "  Duchess  "  and  "  Vittoria."  His  nature  had 
something  of  the  sleuth-hound  quality  in  it,  and  a 
plot,  to  keep  his  mind  eager  on  the  trail,  must  be 
sprinkled  with  fresh  blood  at  every  turn.  We  do 
not  forget  all  the  fine  things  that  Lamb  has  said  of 
Webster,  but,  when  Lamb  wrote,  the  Elizabethan 
drama  was  an  El  Dorado,  whose  micaceous  sand, 
even,  was  treasured  as  auriferous,  —  and  no  won- 
der, in  a  generation  which  admired  the  "  Botanic 
Garden."  Webster  is  the  Gherardo  della  Notte  of 
his  day,  and  himself  calls  his  "Vittoria  Corom- 
bona  "  a  "  night-piece."  Though  he  had  no  con- 
ception of  Nature  in  its  large  sense,  as  something 
pervading  a  whole  character  and  making  it  consis- 
tent with  itself,  nor  of  Art,  as  that  which  dominates 
an  entire  tragedy  and  makes  all  the  characters  foils 
to  each  other  and  tributaries  to  the  catastrophe, 
yet  there  are  flashes  of  Nature  in  his  plays,  struck 
out  by  the  collisions  of  passion,  and  dramatic  inten- 
sities of  phrase  for  which  it  would  be  hard  to  find 
the  match.  The  "  prithee,  undo  this  button  "  of 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  281 

Lear,  by  which  Shakespeare  makes  us  feel  the 
swelling  of  the  old  king's  heart,  and  that  the  bod- 
ily results  of  mental  anguish  have  gone  so  far  as 
to  deaden  for  the  moment  all  intellectual  conscious- 
ness and  forbid  all  expression  of  grief,  is  hardly 
finer  than  the  broken  verse  which  Webster  puts 
into  the  mouth  of  Ferdinand  when  he  sees  the  body 
of  his  sister,  murdered  by  his  own  procurement :  — 

"  Cover  her  face  :  mine  eyes  dazzle  :  she  died  young." 

He  has  not  the  condensing  power  of  Shakespeare, 
who  squeezed  meaning  into  a  phrase  with  an  hy- 
draulic press,  but  he  could  carve  a  cherry-stone 
with  any  of  the  concettisti,  and  abounds  in  imagi- 
native quaintnesses  that  are  worthy  of  Donne,  and 
epigrammatic  tersenesses  that  remind  us  of  Fuller. 
Nor  is  he  wanting  in  poetic  phrases  of  the  purest 
crystallization.  Here  are  a  few  examples  :  — 

"  Oh,  if  there  he  another  world  i'  th'  moon, 
As  some  fantastics  dream,  I  could  wish  all  men, 
The  whole  race  of  them,  for  their  inconstancy, 
Sent  thither  to  people  that !  " 

(Old  Chaucer  was  yet  slier.  After  saying  that 
Lamech  was  the  first  faithless  lover,  he  adds,  — 

"  And  he  invented  tents,  unless  men  lie,"  — 

implying  that  he  was  the  prototype  of  nomadic 
men.) 

' '  Virtue  is  ever  sowing  of  her  seeds : 
In  the  trenches,  for  the  soldier ;  in  the  wakeful  study, 
For  the  scholar ;  in  the  furrows  of  the  sea, 
For  men  of  our  profession  [merchants]  ;  all  of  which 
Arise  and  spring  up  honor." 

("  Of  all  which,"  Mr.  Hazlitt  prints  it.) 


282  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

11  Poor  Jolenta  !  should  she  hear  of  this, 
She  would  not  after  the  report  keep  fresh 
So  long  as  flowers  on  graves." 

"  For  sin  and  shame  are  ever  tied  together 
With  Gordian  knots  of  such  a  strong  thread  spun, 
They  cannot  without  violence  be  undone." 

"  One  whose  mind 

Appears  more  like  a  ceremonious  chapel 
Full  of  sweet  music,  than  a  thronging  presence." 

"  What  is  death  ? 

The  safest  trench  i'  th'  world  to  keep  man  free 
From  Fortune's  gunshot." 

"  It  has  ever  been  my  opinion 
That  there  are  none  love  perfectly  indeed, 
But  those  that  hang  or  drown  themselves  for  love," 

says  Julio,  anticipating  Butler's 

"  But  he  that  drowns,  or  blows  out 's  brains, 
The  Devil 's  in  him,  if  he  feigns." 

He  also  anticipated  La  Rochefoucauld  and  Byron 
in  their  apophthegm  concerning  woman's  last  love. 
In  "  The  Devil's  Law-Case,"  Leonora  says,  — 

"  For,  as  we  love  our  youngest  children  best, 
So  the  last  fruit  of  our  affection, 
Wherever  we  bestow  it,  is  most  strong, 
Most  violent,  most  unresistible ; 
Since  'tis,  indeed,  our  latest  harvest-home, 
Last  merriment  'fore  winter." 

It  is  worth  remark  that  there  are  a  greater  num- 
ber of  reminiscences,  conscious  or  unconscious,  of 
Shakespeare  in  Webster's  plays  than  in  those  of 
any  other  Elizabethan  dramatist. 

In  editing  Webster,  Mr.  Hazlitt  had  the  advan- 
tage (except  in  a  single  doubtful  play)  of  a  pre- 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  283 

decessor  in  the  Rev.  Alexander  Dyce,  beyond  all 
question  the  best  living  scholar  of  the  literature  of 
the  times  of  Elizabeth  and  James  I.  If  he  give  no 
proof  of  remarkable  fitness  for  his  task,  he  seems, 
at  least,  to  have  been  diligent  and  painstaking.  His 
notes  are  short  and  to  the  point,  and  —  which  we 
consider  a  great  merit  —  at  the  foot  of  the  page.  If 
he  had  added  a  glossarial  index,  we  should  have 
been  still  better  pleased.  Mr.  Hazlitt  seems  to 
have  read  over  the  text  with  some  care,  and  he  has 
had  the  good  sense  to  modernize  the  orthography, 
or,  as  he  says,  has  "  observed  the  existing  standard 
of  spelling  throughout."  Yet  —  for  what  reason 
we  cannot  imagine  —  he  prints  "  I  "  for  "  ay," 
taking  the  pains  to  explain  it  every  time  in  a  note, 
and  retains  "  banquerout "  and  "  coram  "  appar- 
ently for  the  sake  of  telling  us  that  they  mean' 
"  bankrupt  "  and  "  quorum."  He  does  not  seem 
to  have  a  quick  ear  for  scansion,  which  would 
sometimes  have  assisted  him  to  the  true  reading. 
We  give  an  example  or  two  :  — 

"  The  obligation  wherein  we  all  stood  bound 
Cannot  be  concealed  [cancelled]  without  great  reproach." 

"  The  realm,  not  they, 

Must  be  regarded.     Be  [we]  strong  and  bold, 
We  are  the  people's  factors." 

"Shall  not  be  o'erburdened  [overburdened]  in  our  reign." 

"A  merry  heart 
And  a  good  stomach  to  [a]  feast  are  all." 

"  Have  her  meat  serv'd  up  by  bawds  and  ruffians."  [dele  "  up."] 


"  Brother  or  father 
In  [a]  dishonest  suit,  shall  be  to  me." 


284  LIBRARY   OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

"  What's  she  in  Rome  your  greatness  cannot  awe, 

Or  your  rich  purse  purchase  ?     Promises  and  threats."     [dele 
the  second  "your."] 

"  Through  clouds  of  envy  and  disast  [rous]  change." 
"  The  Devil  drives ;  'tis  [it  is]  full  time  to  go." 

He  has  overlooked  some  strange  blunders.  What 
is  the  meaning  of 

"  Laugh  at  your  misery,  as  foredeeming  you 
An  idle  meteor,  which  drawn  forth,  the  earth 
Would  soon  be  lost  i'  the  air  "  ? 

We  hardly  need  say  that  it  should  be 

"  An  idle  meteor,  which,  drawn  forth  the  earth, 
Would,"  &c.  • 

"  forwardness "  for  "^rowardness,"  (vol.  ii.  p. 
87,)  "tennis-balls  struck  and  banned"  for  "ban- 
died"  (Ib.  p.  275,)  may  be  errors  of  the  press ; 
but 

"  Come,  I  '11  love  you  wisely : 
That's  jealousy," 

has  crept  in  by  editorial  oversight  for  "wisely, 
that 's  jealously."  So  have 

"  Ay,  the  great  emperor  of  [or]  the  mighty  Cham  "; 

and 

"  This  wit  [uritfi]  taking  long  journeys  "  ; 

and 

"  Virginins,  thou  dost  but  supply  my  place, 
I  thine  :  Fortune  hath  lift  me  \thee]  to  my  chair, 
And  thrown  me  headlong  to  thy  pleading  bar  "  ; 

and 

"  I  '11  pour  my  soul  into  my  daughter's  belly,  [body, ] 
And  with  my  soldier's  tears  embalm  her  wounds." 

We  suggest  that  the  change  of  an  a  to  an  r  would 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  285 

make  sense  of  the  following :  "  Come,  my  little 
punk,  with  thy  two  compositors,  to  this  unlawful 
painting-house,"  [printing-house.]  which  Mr.  Haz- 
litt  awkwardly  endeavors  to  explain  by  this  note 
on  the  word  compositors,  —  "  i.  e.  (conjecturally), 
making  up  the  composition  of  the  picture  " !  Our 
readers  can  decide  for  themselves ;  —  the  passage 
occurs  vol.  i.  p.  214. 

We  think  Mr.  Hazlitt's  notes  are,  in  the  main, 
good ;  but  we  should  like  to  know  his  authority  for 
saying  that  pench  means  "  the  hole  in  a  bench  by 
which  it  was  taken  up,"  —  that  "  descant  "  means 
"  look  askant  on,"  —  and  that  "  I  wis  "  is  equiva- 
lent to  "  I  surmise,  imagine,"  which  it  surely  is  not 
in  the  passage  to  which  his  note  is  appended.  On 
page  9,  vol.  i.,  we  read  in  the  text, 

"  To  whom,  my  lord,  bends  thus  your  awe," 

and  in  the  note,  i.  e.  submission.  The  original 
has  erne,  which,  if  it  mean  ave,  is  unmeaning  here." 
Did  Mr.  Hazlitt  never  see  a  picture  of  the  An- 
nunciation with  ave  written  on  the  scroll  proceed- 
ing from  the  bending  angel's  mouth  ?  We  find  the 
same  word  in  vol.  iii.  p.  217  :  — 

"  Whose  station's  built  on  avees  and  applause." 

Vol.  iii.  pp.  47, 48 :  — 

"  And  then  rest,  gentle  bones  ;  yet  pray 
That  when  by  the  precise  you  are  view'd, 
A  supersedeas  be  not  sued 
To  remove  you  to  a  place  more  airy, 
That  in  your  stead  they  may  keep  chary 
Stockfish  or  seacoal,  for  the  abuses 
Of  sacrilege  have  turned  graves  to  viler  uses." 


286  LIBRARY   OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

To  the  last  verse  Mr.  Hazlitt  appends  this  note, 
"  Than  that  of  burning  men's  bones  for  fuel." 
There  is  no  allusion  here  to  burning  men's  bones, 
but  simply  to  the  desecration  of  graveyards  by 
building  warehouses  upon  them,  in  digging  the 
foundations  for  which  the  bones  would  be  thrown 
out.  The  allusion  is,  perhaps,  to  the  "  Churchyard 
of  the  Holy  Trinity  " ;  —  see  Stow's  Survey,  ed. 
1603,  p.  126.  Elsewhere,  in  the  same  play,  Web- 
ster alludes  bitterly  to  "  begging  church-land." 

Vol.  i.  p.  73,  "And  if  he  walk  through  the 
street,  he  ducks  at  the  penthouses,  like  an  ancient 
that  dares  not  flourish  at  the  oathtaking  of  the 
praetor  for  fear  of  the  signposts."  Mr.  Hazlitt's 
note  is,  "  Ancient  was  a  standard  or  flag  ;  also  an 
ensign,  of  which  Skinner  says  it  is  a  corruption. 
What  the  meaning  of  the  simile  is  the  present 
editor  cannot  suggest."  We  confess  we  find  no 
difficulty.  The  meaning  plainly  is,  that  he  ducks 
for  fear  of  hitting  the  penthouses,  as  an  ensign  on 
the  Lord  Mayor's  day  dares  not  flourish  his  stan- 
dard for  fear  of  hitting  the  signposts.  We  suggest 
the  query,  whether  ancient,  in  this  sense,  be  not 
a  corruption  of  the  Italian  word  anziano. 

Want  of  space  compels  us  to  leave  many  other 
passages,  which  we  had  marked  for  comment,  un- 
noticed. We  are  surprised  that  Mr.  Hazlitt,  (see 
his  Introduction  to  "  Vittoria  Corombona,")  in  un- 
dertaking to  give  us  some  information  concerning 
the  Dukedom  and  Castle  of  Bracciano,  should  uni- 
formly spell  it  Brachiano.  Shakespeare's  Petru- 
chio  might  have  put  him  on  his  guard.  We  should 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  287 

be  glad  also  to  know  in  what  part  of  Italy  he  places 
Malfi. 

Mr.  Hazlitt's  General  Introduction  supplies  us 
with  no  new  information,  but  this  was  hardly  to  be 
expected  where  Mr.  Dyce  had  already  gone  over 
the  field.  We  wish  that  he  had  been  able  to  give 
us  better  means  of  distinguishing  the  three  almost 
contemporary  John  Websters  one  from  the  other, 
for  we  think  the  internal  evidence  is  enough  to 
show  that  all  the  plays  attributed  to  the  author  of 
the  "  Duchess  "  and  "  Vittoria "  could  not  have 
been  written  by  the  same  person.  On  the  whole, 
he  has  given  us  a  very  respectable,  and  certainly  a 
very  pretty,  edition  of  an  eminent  poet. 

We  could  almost  forgive  all  other  shortcomings 
of  Mr.  Smith's  library  for  the  great  gift  it  brings 
us  in  the  five  volumes  of  Chapman's  translations. 
Coleridge,  sending  Chapman's  Homer  to  Words- 
worth, writes,  "  What  is  stupidly  said  of  Shake- 
speare is  really  true  and  appropriate  of  Chapman  ; 
mighty  faults  counterpoised  by  mighty  beauties. 
.  .  .  It  is  as  truly  an  original  poem  as  the  Faery 
Queene  ;  —  it  will  give  you  small  idea  of  Homer, 
though  a  far  truer  one  than  Pope's  epigrams,  or 
Cowper's  cumbersome  most  anti-Homeric  Milton- 
ism.  For  Chapman  writes  and  feels  as  a  poet,  — 
as  Homer  might  have  written  had  he  lived  in  Eng- 
land in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  In  short, 
it  is  an  exquisite  poem,  in  spite  of  its  frequent  and 
perverse  quaintnesses  and  harshnesses,  which  are, 
however,  amply  repaid  by  almost  unexampled  sweet- 


288  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

ness  and  beauty  of  language,  all  over  spirit  and 
feeling. "  l  From  a  passage  of  his  Preface  it  would 
appear  that  Chapman  had  been  criticised  pretty 
sharply  in  his  own  day  for  amplifying  his  author. 
"  And  this  one  example  I  thought  necessary  to  in- 
sert here  to  show  my  detractors  that  they  have  no 
reason  to  vilify  my  circumlocution  sometimes,  when 
their  most  approved  Grecians,  Homer's  interpre- 
ters generally,  hold  him  fit  to  be  so  converted. 
Yet  how  much  I  differ,  and  with  what  authority, 
let  my  impartial  and  judicial  reader  judge.  Al- 
ways conceiving  how  pedantical  and  absurd  an 
affectation  it  is  in  the  interpretation  of  any  author 
(much  more  of  Homer)  to  turn  him  word  for 
word,  when  (according  to  Horace  and  other  best 
lawgivers  to  translators)  it  is  the  part  of  every 
knowing  and  judicial  interpreter  not  to  follow  the 
number  and  order  of  words,  but  the  material  things 
themselves,  and  sentences  to  weigh  diligently,  and 
to  clothe  and  adorn  them  with  words  and  such  a 
style  and  form  of  oration  as  are  most  apt  for  the 
language  in  which  they  are  converted."  Again  in 
his  verses  To  the  Reader,  he  speaks  of 

"  The  ample  transmigration  to  be  shown 
By  nature-loving  Poesy," 

and  defends  his  own  use  of  "  needful  periphrases," 
and  says  that  "  word  for  word  "  translation  is  to 
"  Make  fish  with  fowl,  camels  with  whales,  engender." 

"  For  even  as  different  a  production 

Ask  Greek  and  English  :  since,  as  they  in  sounds 
And  letters  shun  one  form  and  unison, 

1  Literary  Remains,    vol.  i.  pp.  259,  260. 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  289 

So  have  their  sense  and  elegancy  bounds 
In  their  distinguished  natures,  and  require 
Only  a  judgment  to  make  both  consent 
In  sense  and  elocution." 

There  are  two  theories  of  translation, — literal 
paraphrase  and  free  reproduction.  At  best,  the 
translation  of  poetry  is  but  an  imitation  of  natural 
flowers  in  cambric  or  wax  ;  and  however  much  of 
likeness  there  may  be,  the  aroma,  whose  charm  of 
indefinable  suggestion  in  the  association  of  ideas  is 
so  powerful,  is  precisely  what  is  lost  irretrievably. 

"  The  parting  genius  is  with  sighing  sent  " 

from  where  it  lurked  in  the  immortal  verse,  a  pre- 
sence divined  rather  than  ascertained,  baffling  the 
ear  which  it  enchanted,  escaping  the  grasp  which 
yet  it  thrilled,  airy,  evanescent,  imperishable,  beck- 
oning the  imagination  with  promises  better  than 
any  fulfilment.  The  paraphrase  is  a  plaster-cast 
of  the  Grecian  urn ;  the  reproduction,  if  by  a  man 
of  genius,  such  as  the  late  Mr.  Fitzgerald,  is  like 
Keats's  ode,  which  makes  the  figures  move  and  the 
leaves  tremble  again,  if  not  with  the  old  life,  with 
a  sorcery  which  deceives  the  fancy.  Of  all  Eng- 
lish poets,  Keats  was  the  one  to  have  translated 
Homer. 

In  any  other  than  a  mere  prose  version  of  a 
great  poem,  we  have  a  right  to  demand  that  it  give 
us  at  least  an  adequate  impression  of  force  and 
originality.  We  have  a  right  to  ask,  If  this  poem 
were  published  now  for  the  first  time,  as  the  work 
of  a  contemporary,  should  we  read  it,  not  with  the 
same,  but  with  anything  like  the  same  conviction 


290  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

of  its  freshness,  vigor,  and  originality,  its  high 
level  of  style  and  its  witchery  of  verse,  that  Homer, 
if  now  for  the  first  time  discovered,  would  infalli- 
bly beget  in  us  ?  Perhaps  this  looks  like  asking 
for  a  new  Homer  to  translate  the  old  one ;  but  if 
this  be  too  much,  it  is  certainly  not  unfair  to  insist 
that  the  feeling  given  us  should  be  that  of  life,  and 
not  artifice. 

The  Homer  of  Chapman,  whatever  its  defects, 
alone  of  all  English  versions  has  this  crowning 
merit  of  being,  where  it  is  most  successful,  thor- 
oughly alive.  He  has  made  for  us  the  best  poem 
that  has  yet  been  Englished  out  of  Homer,  and  in 
so  far  gives  us  a  truer  idea  of  him.  Of  all  trans- 
lators he  is  farthest  removed  from  the  fault  with 
which  he  charges  others,  when  he  says  that  "  our 
divine  master's  most  ingenious  imitating  the  life 
of  things  (which  is  the  soul  of  a  poem)  is  never 
respected  nor  perceived  by  his  interpreters  only 
standing  pedantically  on  the  grammar  and  words, 
utterly  ignorant  of  the  sense  and  grace  of  him." 
His  mastery  of  English  is  something  wonderful 
even  in  an  age  of  masters,  when  the  language  was 
still  a  mother-tongue,  and  not  a  contrivance  of  ped- 
ants and  grammarians.  He  had  a  reverential  sense 
of  "  our  divine  Homer's  depth  and  gravity,  which 
will  not  open  itself  to  the  curious  austerity  of 
belaboring  art,  but  only  to  the  natural  and  most 
ingenious  soul  of  our  thrice-sacred  Poesy."  His 
task  was  as  holy  to  him  as  a  version  of  Scripture  ; 
he  justifies  the  tears  of  Achilles  by  those  of  Jesus, 
and  the  eloquence  of  his  horse  by  that  of  Balaam's 


LIBRARY  OF   OLD  AUTHORS  291 

less  noble  animal.  He  does  not  always  keep  close 
to  his  original,  but  he  sins  no  more,  even  in  this, 
than  any  of  his  rivals.  He  is  especially  great  in 
the  similes.  Here  he  rouses  himself  always,  and 
if  his  enthusiasm  sometimes  lead  him  to  heighten  a 
little,  or  even  to  add  outright,  he  gives  us  a  picture 
full  of  life  and  action,  or  of  the  grandeur  and 
beauty  of  nature,  as  stirring  to  the  fancy  as  his 
original.  Of  all  who  have  attempted  Homer,  he 
has  the  topping  merit  of  being  inspired  by  him. 

In  the  recent  discussions  of  Homeric  translation 
in  England,  it  has  always  been  taken  for  granted 
that  we  had  or  could  have  some  adequate  concep- 
tion of  Homer's  metre.  Lord  Derby,  in  his  Pre- 
face, plainly  assumes  this.  But  there  can  be  no 
greater  fallacy.  No  human  ears,  much  less  Greek 
ones,  could  have  endured  what,  with  our  mechan- 
ical knowledge  of  the  verse,  ignorance  of  the  ac- 
cent, and  English  pronunciation,  we  blandly  ac- 
cept for  such  music  as  Homer  chanted.  We  have 
utterly  lost  the  tune  and  cannot  reproduce  it.  Mr. 
Newman  conjectures  it  to  have  been  something 
like  Yankee  Doodle;  Mr.  Arnold  is  sure  it  was 
the  English  hexameter ;  and  they  are  both  partly 
right  so  far  as  we  may  trust  our  reasonable  impres- 
sions ;  for,  after  all,  an  impression  is  all  that  we 
have.  Cowper  attempts  to  give  the  ring  of  the 

apyvpeoLO  f$iolo  by 

"  Dread-sounding,  bounding  on  the  silver  bow," 

which  only  too  fatally  recalls  the  old  Scottish  dan- 
cing-tune, — 


292  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

"  Amaisit  I  gaisit 
To  see,  led  at  command, 
A  strampant  and  rampant 
Ferss  lyon  in  his  hand." 

The  attempt  was  in  the  right  direction,  however, 
for  Homer,  like  Dante  and  Shakespeare,  like  all 
who  really  command  language,  seems  fond  of 
playing  with  assonances.  No  doubt  the  Homeric 
verse  consented  at  will  to  an  eager  rapidity,  and 
no  doubt  also  its  general  character  is  that  of  pro- 
longed but  unmonotonous  roll.  Everybody  says  it 
is  like  the  long  ridges  of  the  sea,  some  overtopping 
their  neighbors  a  little,  each  with  an  independent 
undulation  of  its  crest,  yet  all  driven  by  a  common 
impulse,  and  breaking,  not  with  the  sudden  snap 
of  an  unyielding  material,  but  one  after  the  other, 
with  a  stately  curve,  to  slide  back  and  mingle  with 
those  that  follow.  Chapman's  measure  (in  the 
Iliad)  has  the  disadvantage  of  an  association  with 
Sternhold  and  Hopkins,  but  it  has  the  merit  of 
length,  and,  where  he  is  in  the  right  mood,  is  free, 
spirited,  and  sonorous.  Above  all,  there  is  every- 
where the  movement  of  life  and  passion  in  it. 
Chapman  was  a  master  of  verse,  making  it  hurry, 
linger,  or  stop  short,  to  suit  the  meaning.  Like  all 
great  versifiers  he  must  be  read  with  study,  for  the 
slightest  change  of  accent  loses  the  expression  of 
an  entire  passage.  His  great  fault  as  a  translator 
is  that  he  takes  fire  too  easily  and  runs  beyond  his 
author.  Perhaps  he  intensifies  too  much,  though 
this  be  a  fault  on  the  right  side ;  he  certainly  some- 
times weakens  the  force  of  passages  by  crowding  in 


LIBRARY   OF  OLD  AUTHORS  293 

particulars  which  Homer  had  wisely  omitted,  for 
Homer's  simplicity  is  by  no  means  mere  simplicity 
of  thought,  nor,  as  it  is  often  foolishly  called,  of 
nature.  It  is  the  simplicity  of  consummate  art, 
the  last  achievement  of  poets  and  the  invariable 
characteristic  of  the  greatest  among  them.  To 
Chapman's  mind  once  warmed  to  its  work,  the 
words  are  only  a  mist,  suggesting,  while  it  hides, 
the  divine  form  of  the  original  image  or  thought ; 
and  his  imagination  strives  to  body  forth  that, 
as  he  conceives  it,  in  all  its  celestial  proportions. 
Let  us  compare  with  Lord  Derby's  version,  as  the 
latest,  a  passage  where  Chapman  merely  intensi- 
fies, (Book  XIII.,  beginning  at  the  86th  verse  in 
Lord  Derby,  the  73d  of  Chapman,  and  the  76th  of 
Homer)  :  — 

"  Whom  answered  thus  the  son  of  Telamon : 
'  My  hands,  too,  grasp  with  firmer  hold  the  spear, 
My  spirit,  like  thine,  is  stirred  ;  I  feel  my  feet 
Instinct  with  fiery  life ;  nor  should  I  fear 
With  Hector,  son  of  Priam,  in  his  might 
Alone  to  meet,  and  grapple  to  the  death.'  " 

Thus  Lord  Derby.     Chapman  renders :  — 

"  This  Telamonius  thus  received :   '  So,  to  my  thoughts,  my  hands 
Burn  with  desire  to  toss  my  lance  ;  each  foot  beneath  me  stands 
Bare  on  bright  fire  to  use  his  speed ;  my  heart  is  raised  so  high, 
That  to  encounter  Hector's  self  I  long  insatiately-'  " 

There  is  no  question  which  version  is  the  more 
energetic.  Is  Lord  Derby's  nearer  the  original  in 
being  tamer  ?  He  has  taken  the  "  instinct  with 
fiery  life"  from  Chapman's  hint.  The  original 
has  simply  "restless,"  or  more  familiarly  "in  a 
fidget."  There  is  nothing  about  "  grappling  to  the 


294  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

death,"  and  "  nor  should  I  fear "  is  feeble  where 
Chapman  with  his  "long  insatiately"  is  literal. 
We  will  give  an  example  where  Chapman  has  am- 
plified his  original  (Book  XVI.  v.  426 ;  Derby, 
494 ;  Chapman,  405)  :  — 

"  Down  jumped  he  from  his  chariot ;  down  leapt  his  foe  as  light ; 
And  as,  on  some  far-looking  rock,  a  cast  of  vultures  fight, 
Fly  on  each  other,  strike  and  truss,  part,  meet,  and  then  stick  by, 
Tug  both  with  crooked  beaks  and  seres,  cry,  fight,  and  fight  and 

cry, 
So  fiercely  fought  these  angry  kings."  * 

Lord  Derby's  version  is  nearer  :  — 

"  He  said,  and  from  his  car,  accoutred,  sprang ; 
Patroclus  saw  and  he  too  leaped  to  earth. 
As  on  a  lofty  rock,  with  angry  screams, 
Hook-beaked,  with  talons  curved,  two  vultures  fight, 
So  with  loud  shouts  these  two  to  battle  rushed." 

Chapman  has  made  his  first  line  out  of  two  in 
Homer,  but,  granting  the  license,  how  rapid  and 
springy  is  the  verse !  Lord  Derby's  "  withs  "  are 
not  agreeable,  his  "  shouts  "  is  an  ill-chosen  word 
for  a  comparison  with  vultures,  "  talons  curved  "  is 
feeble,  and  his  verse  is,  as  usual,  mainly  built  up 
of  little  blocks  of  four  syllables  each.  "  To  battle  " 
also  is  vague.  With  whom?  Homer  says  that 
they  rushed  each  at  other.  We  shall  not  discuss 
how  much  license  is  loyal  in  a  translator,  but,  as 
we  think  his  chief  aim  should  be  to  give  a  feeling 
of  that  life  and  spirit  which  makes  the  immortality 
of  his  original,  and  is  the  very  breath  in  the  nos- 
trils of  all  poetry,  he  has  a  right  to  adapt  himself 
to  the  genius  of  his  own  language.  If  he  would 

1  Chapman  himself  was  evidently  pleased  with  this,  for  he  cites 
it  as  a  sample  of  his  version. 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  295 

do  justice  to  his  author,  he  must  make  up  in  one 
passage  for  his  unavoidable  shortcomings  in  an- 
other. He  may  here  and  there  take  for  granted 
certain  exigencies  of  verse  in  his  original  which  he 
feels  in  his  own  case.  Even  Dante,  who  boasted 
that  no  word  had  ever  made  him  say  what  he  did 
not  wish,  should  have  made  an  exception  of  rhym- 
ing ones,  for  these  sometimes,  even  in  so  abundant 
a  language  as  the  Italian,  have  driven  the  most 
straightforward  of  poets  into  an  awkward  detour. 
We  give  one  more  passage  from  Chapman  :  — 

"  And  all  in  golden  weeds 

He  clothed  himself  ;  the  golden  scourge  most  elegantly  done 
He  took  and  mounted  to  his  seat ;  and  then  the  god  begun 
To  drive  his  chariot  through  the  waves.     From  whirl-pits  every 

way 

The  whales  exulted  under  him,  and  knew  their  king ;  the  sea 
For  joy  did  open,  and  his  horse  so  swift  and  lightly  flew 
The  under  axle-tree  of  brass  no  drop  of  water  drew." 

Here  the  first  half  is  sluggish  and  inadequate,  but 
what  surging  vigor,  what  tumult  of  the  sea,  what 
swiftness,  in  the  last !  Here  is  Lord  Derby's  at- 
tempt :  — 

"  All  clad  in  gold,  the  golden  lash  he  grasped 
Of  curious  work,  and,  mounting  on  his  car, 
Skimmed  o'er  the  waves ;  from  all  the  depths  below 
Gambolled  around  the  monsters  of  the  deep, 
Acknowledging  their  king  ;  the  joyous  sea 
Parted  her  waves ;  swift  flew  the  bounding  steeds, 
Nor  was  the  brazen  axle  wet  with  spray." 

Chapman  here  is  truer  to  his  master,  and  the  mo- 
tion is  in  the  verse  itself.  Lord  Derby's  is  de- 
scription, and  not  picture.  "  Monsters  of  the  deep  " 
is  an  example  of  the  hackneyed  periphrases  in 


296  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

which  he  abounds,  like  all  men  to  whom  language 
is  a  literary  tradition,  and  not  a  living  gift  of  the 
Muses.  "  Lash "  is  precisely  the  wrong  word. 
Chapman  is  always  great  at  sea.  Here  is  another 
example  from  the  Fourteenth  Book  :  — 

"  And  as,  when  with  unwieldy  waves  the  great  sea  foref eels  winds 
That  both  ways  murmur,  and  no  way  her  certain  current  finds, 
But  pants  and  swells  confusedly,  here  goes,  and  there  will  stay, 
Till  on  it  air  casts  one  firm  wind,  and  then  it  rolls  away." 

Observe  how  the  somewhat  ponderous  movement  of 
the  first  verse  assists  the  meaning  of  the  words. 
He  is  great,  too,  in  single  phrases  and  lines  :  — 

"  And  as,  from  top  of  some  steep  hill,  the  Lightener  strips  a  cloud 
And  lets  a  great  sky  out  of  Heaven,  in  whose  delightsome  light 
All  prominent  foreheads,  forests,  towers,  and  temples  cheer  the 
sight. ' '  (Book  XVI.  v.  286.) 

The  lion  "  lets  his  rough  brows  down  so  low  they 
hide  his  eyes  "  ;  the  flames  "  wrastle  "  in  the 
woods;  "rude  feet  dun  the  day  with  a  fog  of 
dust ; "  and  so  in  a  hundred  other  instances. 

For  an  example  of  his  more  restrained  vigor, 
take  the  speech  of  Sarpedon  in  the  Twelfth  Book 
of  the  Iliad,  and  for  poetic  beauty,  the  whole  story 
of  Ulysses  and  Nausikaa  in  the  Odyssey.  It  was 
here  that  Keats  made  himself  Grecian  and  learned 
to  versify. 

Mr.  Hooper  has  done  his  work  of  editing  well. 
But  he  has  sometimes  misapprehended  his  author, 
and  distorted  his  meaning  by  faulty  punctuation. 
In  one  of  the  passages  already  cited,  Mr.  Hoop- 
er's text  stands  thus  :  "  Lest  I  be  prejudiced  with 
opinion,  to  dissent,  of  ignorance,  or  singularity." 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  297 

All  the  commas  which  darken  the  sense  should  be 
removed.  Chapman  meant  to  say,  "  Lest  I  be 
condemned  beforehand  by  people  thinking  I  dis- 
sent out  of  ignorance  or  singularity."  (Iliad,  vol. 
i.  p.  23.)  So  on  the  next  page  the  want  of  a  hy- 
phen makes  nonsense :  "  And  saw  the  round  com- 
ing [round-coming]  of  this  silver  bow  of  our  Phoe- 
bus," that  is,  the  crescent  coming  to  the  full  circle. 
In  the  translations,  too,  the  pointing  needs  refor- 
mation now  and  then,  but  shows,  on  the  whole,  a 
praiseworthy  fidelity.  We  will  give  a  few  exam- 
ples of  what  we  believe  to  be  errors  on  the  part  of 
Mr.  Hooper,  who,  by  the  way,  is  weakest  on  points 
which  concern  the  language  of  Chapman's  day. 
We  follow  the  order  of  the  text  as  most  convenient* 
"  Bid  "  (II.  i.)  is  explained  to  mean  "  threaten, 
challenge,"  where  "  offer  "  would  be  the  right  word. 

"And  cast 
The  offal  of  all  to  the  deep."     (II.  i.  309.) 

Surely  a  slip  of  Chapman's  pen.  He  must  have 
intended  to  write  "  Of  all  the  offal,"  a  transversion 
common  with  him  and  needed  here  to  avoid  a  pun- 
ning jingle. 

"So  much  I  must  affirm  our  power  exceeds  th'  inhabitant." 

(II.  ii.  110.) 

Mr.  Hooper's  note  is  "  inhabiters,  viz.  of  Troy." 
"  Inhabitant  "  is  an  adjective  agreeing  with 
"  power."  Our  power  without  exceeds  that  within, 

"  Yet  all  this  time  to  stay, 

Out  of  our  judgments,  for  our  end,  and  now  to  take  our  way 
Without  it  were  absurd  and  vile."     (II.  ii.  257.) 

A  note  on  this  passage  tells  us  that  "  out  of  judg- 


298  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

ments  "  means  "  against  our  inclinations."  It 
means  simply  "  in  accordance  with  our  good  judg- 
ment," just  as  we  still  say  "  out  of  his  wisdom." 
Compare  II.  iii.  63, 

"Hector,  because  thy  sharp  reproof  is  out  of  justice  given, 

I  take  it  well." 
"  And  as  Jove,  brandishing  a  star  which  men  a  comet  call, 

Hurls  out  his  curled  hair  abroad,  that  from  his  brand  exhals 

A  thousand  sparks."     (II.  iv.  85.) 

Mr.  Hooper's  note  is  "  '  Which  men  a  comet  call ' 
—  so  both  the  folios.  Dr.  Taylor  has  printed 
*  which  man  a  comet  calls'  This  certainly  suits 
the  rhyme,  but  I  adhere  to  Chapman's  text." 
Both  editors  have  misunderstood  the  passage. 
The  fault  is  not  in  "  call "  but  in  "  exhals,"  a  clear 
misprint  for  "exhall,"  the  spelling,  as  was  com- 
mon, being  conformed  to  the  visible  rhyme. 
"  That "  means  "  so  that "  (a  frequent  Elizabethan 
construction)  and  "  exhall "  is  governed  by 
"  sparks."  The  meaning  is,  "  As  when  Jove, 
brandishing  a  comet,  hurls  out  its  curled  hair  so 
that  a  thousand  sparks  exhale  from  its  burning." 

"  The  evicke  skipping  from  the  rock." 

Mr.  Hooper  tell  us,  "  It  is  doubtful  what  this  word 
really  is.  Dr.  Taylor  suggests  that  it  may  proba- 
bly mean  the  evict,  or  doomed  one  —  but  ?  It  is 
possible  Chapman  meant  to  Anglicize  the  Greek 
a!£ ;  or  should  we  read  Ibex,  as  the  a?£  5£ aAos  was 
such  ?  "  The  word  means  the  chamois,  and  is 
merely  the  English  form  of  the  French  ibiche.  Dr. 
Taylor's  reading  would  amaze  us  were  we  not  fa- 
miliar with  the  commentators  on  Shakespeare. 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  299 

"  And  now  they  out-ray  to  your  fleet.' '     (II.  v.  793.) 

"  Out-ray  —  spread  out  in  array ;  abbreviated  from 
array.  Dr.  Taylor  says  '  rush  out,'  from  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  '  rean,'  to  flow ;  but  there  seems  no  necessity 
for  such  an  etymology."  We  should  think  not ! 
Chapman,  like  Pope,  made  his  first  sketch  from  the 
French,  and  corrected  it  by  the  Greek.  Those  who 
would  understand  Chapman's  English  must  allow 
for  traces  of  his  French  guide  here  and  there. 
This  is  one  of  them,  perhaps.  The  word  is  etymo- 
logically  unrelated  to  array.  It  is  merely  the  old 
French  oultreer,  a  derivative  of  ultra.  It  means 
"  they  pass  beyond  their  gates  even  to  your  fleet." 
He  had  said  just  before  that  formerly  "  your  foes 
durst  not  a  foot  address  without  their  ports."  The 
word  occurs  again,  II.  xxiii.  413. 

"When  none,  though  many  kings  put  on,  could  make  his  vaunt, 

he  led 
Tydides  to  renewed  assault  or  issued  first  the  dike." 

(II.  viii.  217.) 

. "  Tydides.  —  He  led  Tydides,  i.  e.  Tydides  he  led. 
An  unusual  construction."  Not  in  the  least.  The 
old  printers  or  authors  sometimes  put  a  comma 
where  some  connecting  particle  was  left  out.  We 
had  just  now  an  instance  where  one  took  the  place 
of  so.  Here  it  supplies  that.  "  None  could  make 
his  vaunt  that  he  led  (that  is,  was  before)  Tydides." 
We  still  use  the  word  in  the  same  sense,  as  the 
"  leading  "  horse  in  a  race. 

"And  all  did  wilfully  expect  the  silver-throned  morn." 

(II.  viii.  497.) 


300  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

"  Wilfully  —  willingly,  anxiously. "  Wishfully,  as 
elsewhere  in  Chapman. 

"And  as,  upon  a  rich  man's  crop  of  barley  or  of  wheat, 
Opposed  for  swiftness  at  their  work,  a  sort  of  reapers  sweat.' ' 

"  Opposed — standing  opposite  to  one  another  for 
expedition's  sake."  We  hope  Mr.  Hooper  under- 
stood his  own  note,  for  it  baffles  us  utterly.  The 
meaning  is  simply  "pitted  against  each  other  to 
see  which  will  reap  most  swiftly."  In  a  note  (II. 
xi.  417)  we  are  told  that  "the  etymology  [of  lu- 
cern]  seems  uncertain."  It  is  nothing  more  than 
a  corruption  of  the  old  French  leucerve  (loup- 
cermer). 

"  I  would  then  make-in  in  deed  and  steep 
My  income  in  their  bloods."     (II.  xvii.  481.) 

"  Income  —  communication,  or  infusion,  of  courage 
from  the  Gods.  The  word  in  this  sense  Todd  says 
was  a  favorite  in  Cromwell's  time."  A  surprising 
note !  Income  here  means  nothing  more  than  "  on- 
fall," as  the  context  shows. 

"  To  put  the  best  in  are. ' '     (H.  xvii.  545.) 

"Ure  —  use.  Skinner  thinks  it  a  contraction  of 
usura.  It  is  frequent  in  Cha'ucer.  Todd  gives  ex- 
amples from  Hooker  and  L'Estrange."  The  word 
is  common  enough,  but  how  Mr.  Hooper  could 
seriously  quote  good  old  Skinner  for  such  an  ety- 
mology we  cannot  conceive.  It  does  not  mean  "  in 
use,"  but  "to  work,"  being  merely  the  English 
form  of  en  oeuvre,  as  "  manure  "  is  of  manoeuvres 

"  So  troop-meal  Troy  pursued  a  while."     (II.  xvii.  634.) 

"  Troop  -meal  —  in   troops,   troop   by  troop.      So 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  301 

piece-meal.  To  meal  was  to  mingle,  mix  together ; 
from  the  French  mgler.  .  .  .  The  reader  would  do 
well  to  consult  Dr.  Jamieson's  excellent '  Dictionary 
of  the  Scottish  Language '  in  voce  4  mell.' "  No 
doubt  the  reader  might  profit  by  consulting  it  under 
any  other  word  beginning  with  M,  and  any  of  them 
would  be  as  much  to  the  purpose  as  mell.  Troop- 
meal,  like  inch-meal,  piece-meal,  implies  separation, 
not  mingling,  and  is  from  a  Teutonic  root.  Mr. 
Hooper  is  always  weak  in  his  linguistic.  In  a  note 
on  II.  xviii.  144,  he  informs  us  that  "  To  sterve  is 
to  die ;  and  the  sense  of  starve,  with  cold  or  hun- 
ger originated  in  the  17th  century."  We  would 
it  had!  But  we  suspect  that  men  had  died  of 
both  these  diseases  earlier.  What  he  should  have 
said  was  that  the  restriction  of  meaning  to  that  of 
dying  with  hunger  was  modern. 

II.  xx.  239  we  have  "  the  God's  "  for  "  the  Gods'," 
and  a  few  lines  below  "  Anchisiades'  "  for  "  Anchi- 
siades's  "  ;  II.  xxi.  407,  "  press'd  "  for  "  prest." 

We  had  noted  a  considerable  number  of  other 
slips,  but  we  will  mention  only  two  more.  "  Treen 
broches  "  is  explained  to  mean  "  branches  of  trees." 
(Hymn  to  Hermes,  227.)  It  means  "wooden 
spits."  In  the  Bacchus  (28,  29)  Mr.  Hooper  re- 
stores a  corrupt  reading  which  Mr.  Singer  (for  a 
wonder)  had  set  right.  He  prints,  — 

"  Nay,  which  of  all  the  Pow'r  fully-divined 
Esteem  ye  him  ?  " 

Of  course  it  should  be  powerfully -divined,  for 
otherwise  we  must  read  "  Pow'rs."  The  five  vol- 
umes need  a  very  careful  revision  in  their  punctu- 


302  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

ation,  and  in  another  edition  we  should  advise  Mr. 
Hooper  to  strike  out  every  note  in  which  he  has 
been  tempted  into  etymology. 

We  come  next  to  Mr.  W.  C.  Hazlitt's  edition  of 
Lovelace.  Three  short  pieces  of  Lovelace's  have 
lived,  and  deserved  to  live :  "  To  Lucasta  from 
Prison,"  "  To  Lucasta  on  going  to  the  Wars,"  and 
"  The  Grasshopper."  They  are  graceful,  airy,  and 
nicely  finished.  The  hist  especially  is  a  charming 
poem,  delicate  in  expression,  and  full  of  quaint 
fancy,  which  only  in  the  latter  half  is  strained  to 
conceit.  As  the  verses  of  a  gentleman  they  are 
among  the  best,  though  not  of  a  very  high  order  as 
poetry.  He  is  to  be  classed  with  the  lucky  authors 
who,  without  great  powers,  have  written  one  or  two 
pieces  so  facile  in  thought  and  fortunate  in  phrase 
as  to  be  carried  lightly  in  the  memory,  poems  in 
which  analysis  finds  little,  but  which  are  charming 
in  their  frail  completeness.  This  faculty  of  hitting 
on  the  precise  lilt  of  thought  and  measure  that  shall 
catch  the  universal  ear,  and  make  them  sing  them- 
selves in  everybody's  memory,  is  a  rare  gift.  We 
have  heard  many  ingenious  persons  try  to  explain 
the  cling  of  such  a  poem  as  "  The  Burial  of  Sir 
John  Moore,"  and  the  result  of  all  seemed  to  be, 
that  there  were  certain  verses  that  were  good,  not 
because  of  their  goodness,  but  because  one  could  not 
forget  them.  They  have  the  great  merit  of  being 
portable,  and  we  have  to  carry  so  much  luggage 
through  life  that  we  should  be  thankful  for  what 
will  pack  easily  and  take  up  no  room. 


LIBRARY  OF   OLD  AUTHORS  303 

All  that  Lovelace  wrote  beside  these  three  poems 
is  utterly  worthless,  mere  chaff  from  the  threshing 
of  his  wits.  Take  out  the  four  pages  on  which  they 
are  printed,  and  we  have  two  hundred  and  eighty- 
nine  left  of  the  sorriest  stuff  that  ever  spoiled 
paper.  The  poems  are  obscure,  without  anything 
in  them  to  reward  perseverance,  dull  without  being 
moral,  and  full  of  conceits  so  far-fetched  that  we 
could  wish  the  author  no  worse  fate  than  to  carry 
them  back  to  where  they  came  from.  We  are  no 
enemies  to  what  are  commonly  called  conceits,  but 
authors  bear  them,  as  heralds  say,  with  a  difference. 
And  a  terrible  difference  it  is!  With  men  like 
Earle,  Donne,  Fuller,  Butler,  Marvell,  and  even 
Quarles,  conceit  means  wit ;  they  would  carve  the 
merest  cherry-stone  of  thought  in  the  quaintest  and 
delicatest  fashion.  But  with  duller  and  more  pain- 
ful writers,  such  as  Gascoigne,  Marston,  Felltham, 
and  a  score  of  others,  even  with  cleverer  ones  like 
Waller,  Crashawe,  and  Suckling,  where  they  in- 
sisted on  being  fine,  their  wit  is  conceit.  Difficulty 
without  success  is  perhaps  the  least  tolerable  kind 
of  writing.  Mere  stupidity  is  a  natural  failing ; 
we  skip  and  pardon.  But  the  other  is  Dulness  in 
a  domino,  that  travesties  its  familiar  figure,  and 
lures  us  only  to  disappoint.  These  unhappy  verses 
of  Lovelace's  had  been  dead  and  lapt  in  congenial 
lead  these  two  hundred  years;  —  what  harm  had 
they  done  Mr.  Hazlitt  that  he  should  disinter 
them  ?  There  is  no  such  disenchanter  of  peaceable 
reputations  as  one  of  these  resurrection-men  of  lit- 
erature, who  will  not  let  mediocrities  rest  in  the 


304  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

grave,  where  the  kind  sexton,  Oblivion,  had  buried 
them,  but  dig  them  up  to  make  a  profit  on  their 
lead. 

Of  all  Mr.  Smith's  editors,  Mr.  W.  Carew  Haz- 
litt  is  the  worst.  He  is  at  times  positively  incred- 
ible, worse  even  than  Mr.  Halliwell,  and  that  is 
saying  a  good  deal.  Worthless  as  Lovelace's  poems 
were,  they  should  have  been  edited  correctly,  if 
edited  at  all.  Even  dulness  and  dirtiness  have  a 
right  to  fair  play  and  to  be  dull  and  dirty  in  their 
own  fashion.  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  allowed  all  the  mis- 
prints of  the  original  (or  by  far  the  greater  part 
of  them)  to  stand,  but  he  has  ventured  on  many 
emendations  of  the  text,  and  in  every  important 
instance  has  blundered,  and  that,  too,  even  where 
the  habitual  practice  of  his  author  in  the  use  of 
words  might  have  led  him  right.  The  misappre- 
hension shown  in  some  of  his  notes  is  beyond  the 
belief  of  any  not  familiar  with  the  way  in  which 
old  books  are  edited  in  England  by  the  job.  We 
have  brought  a  heavy  indictment,  and  we  proceed 
to  our  proof,  choosing  only  cases  where  there  can 
be  no  dispute.  We  should  premise  that  Mr.  Haz- 
litt professes  to  have  corrected  the  punctuation. 

"  And  though  he  sees  it  full  of  wounds, 
Cruel  one,  still  he  wounds  it.     (p.  34.) 

Here  the  original  reads,  "  Cruel  still  on,"  and  the 
only  correction  needed  was  a  comma  after  "  cruel." 

"  And  by  the  glorious  light 

Of  both  those  stars,  which  of  their  spheres  bereft, 
Only  the  jelly  's  left."     (p.  41.) 

The   original  has   "of   which,"   and   rightly,   for 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  305 

"their  spheres  bereft"  is  parenthetic,  and  the 
sense  is  "  of  which  only  the  jelly  's  left."  Love- 
lace is  speaking  of  the  eyes  of  a  mistress  who  has 
grown  old,  and  his  image,  confused  as  it  is,  is 
based  on  the  belief  that  stars  shooting  from  their 
spheres  fell  to  the  earth  as  jellies,  —  a  belief,  by 
the  way,  still  to  be  met  with  in  New  England. 

Lovelace,  describing  a  cow  (and  it  is  one  of  the 
few  pretty  passages  in  the  volume),  says,  — 

"  She  was  the  largest,  goodliest  beast 
That  ever  mead  or  altar  blest, 
Round  as  her  udder,  and  more  white 
Than  is  the  Milky- Way  in  night."     (p.  64.) 

Mr.  Hazlitt  changes  to  "  Round  was  her  udder," 
thus  making  that  white  instead  of  the  cow,  as 
Lovelace  intended.  On  the  next  page  we  read,  — 

"She  takes  her  leave  o'  th'  mournful  neat, 
Who,  by  her  toucht,  now  prizeth  her  life, 
Worthy  alone  the  hollowed  knife." 

Compare  Chapman  (Iliads,  xviii.  480)  :  — 

"  Slew  all  their  white  fleec'd  sheep  and  neat." 

The  original  was  "  prize  their  life,"  and  the  use  of 
"  neat  "  as  a  singular  in  this  way  is  so  uncommon, 
if  not  unprecedented,  and  the  verse  as  corrected 
so  halting,  that  we  have  no  doubt  Lovelace  so 
wrote  it.  Of  course  "  hollowed  "  should  be  "  hal- 
lowed," though  the  broader  pronunciation  still  lin- 
gers in  our  country  pulpits. 

"  What  need  she  other  bait  or  charm 
But  look  ?  or  angle  but  her  arm  ?  "     (p.  65. ) 

So  the  original,  which  Mr.  Hazlitt,  missing  the 
sense,  has  changed  to  "  what  hook  or  angle." 


306  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

"  Fly  Joy  on  wings  of  Popinjays 
To  courts  of  fools  where  as  your  plays 
Die  laught  at  and  forgot."     (p.  67.) 

The  original  has  "  there."     Read,  — 

"  Fly,  Joy,  on  wings  of  popinjays 
To  courts  of  fools ;  there,  as  your  plays, 
Die,"  &c. 

"  Where  as,"  as  then  used,  would  make  it  the 
"  plays  "  that  were  to  die. 

"  As  he  Lucasta  nam'd,  a  groan 
Strangles  the  fainting  passing  tone ; 
But  as  she  heard,  Lucasta  smiles, 
Posses  her  round  ;  she  's  slipt  meamvliiles 
Behind  the  hlind  of  a  thick  bush."     (p.  68.) 

Mr.  Hazlitt's  note  on  "posses"  could  hardly  be 
matched  by  any  member  of  the  posse  comitatus 
taken  at  random  :  — 

"  This  word  does  not  appear  to  have  any  very  exact 
meaning.  See  Halliwell's  Dictionary  of  Archaic  Words, 
art.  Posse,  and  Worcester's  Diet.,  ibid.,  &c.  The  con- 
text here  requires  to  turn  sharply  or  quickly." 

The  "  ibid.,  &c."  is  delightful ;  in  other  words, 
"find  out  the  meaning  of  posse  for  yourself." 
Though  dark  to  Mr.  Hazlitt,  the  word  has  not  the 
least  obscurity  in  it.  It  is  only  another  form  of 
push,  nearer  the  French  pousser,  from  Latin  pul- 
sare,  and  "  the  context  here  requires  "  nothing  more 
than  that  an  editor  should  read  a  poem  if  he  wish 
to  understand  it.  The  plain  meaning  is,  — 

"But,  as  she  heard  Lucasta,  smiles 
Possess  her  round." 

That  is,  when  she  heard  the  name  Lucasta,  — 
for  thus  far  in  the  poem  she  has  passed  under  the 


LIBRARY   OF  OLD  AUTHORS  307 

pseuclonyrae  of  Amarantha.  "  Possess  her  round  " 
is  awkward,  but  mildly  so  for  Lovelace,  who  also 
spells  "  commandress  "  in  the  same  way  with  a 
single  s.  •  Process  is  spelt  presses  in  the  report  of 
those  who  absented  themselves  from  Church  in 
Stratford. 

"  0  thon,  that  swing'st  upon  the  waving  eare, 
Of  some  -well-filled  oaten  beard."     (p.  94.) 

Mr.    Hazlitt,    for   some    inscrutable    reason,   has 
changed  "  haire  "  to  "eare  "  in  the  first  line,  pre- 
ferring the  ear  of  a  beard  to  its  hair  ! 
Mr.  Hazlitt  prints,  — 

"  Poor  verdant  foole !  and  now  green  ice,  thy  joys 
Large  and  as  lasting  as  thy  peirch  of  grass, 
Bid  us  lay  in  'gainst  winter  raine  and  poize 
Their  flouds  with  an  o'erflowing  glasse."     (p.  95.) 

Surely  we  should  read  :  — 

' '  Poor  verdant  foole  and  now  green  ice,  thy  joys, 
Large  and  as  lasting  as  thy  perch  of  grass, 
Bid,"  &c. 

i.  e.  "  Poor  fool  now  frozen,  the  shortness  of  thy 
joys,  who  mad'st  no  provision  against  winter,  warns 
us  to  do  otherwise." 

"  The  radiant  gemme  was  brightly  set 
In  as  divine  a  carkanet ; 
Of  which  the  clearer  was  not  knowne 
Her  minde  or  her  complexion."     (p.  101.) 

The  original  reads  rightly  "  for  which,"  &c.,  and, 
the  passage  being  rightly  pointed,  we  have,  — 

' '  For  which  the  clearer  was  not  known, 
Her  mind  or  her  complexion." 

Of  course  "  complexion  "  had  not  its  present  lim- 
ited meaning. 


308  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

"...  my  future  daring  bayes 
Shall  bow  itself."     (p.  107.) 

"  We  should  read  themselves,"  says  Mr.  Haz- 
litt's  note  authoritatively.  Of  course  a  noun  end- 
ing in  s  is  plural  !  Not  so  fast.  In  spite  of 
the  dictionaries,  bays  was  often  used  in  the  singu- 
lar. 

"  Do  plant  a  sprig  of  cypress,  not  of  bays," 

says  Robert  Randolph  in  verses  prefixed  to  his 
brother's  poems  ;  and  Felltham  in  "  Jonsonus  Vir- 
bius," 

"  A  greener  bays  shall  crown  Ben  Jonson's  name." 

But  we  will  cite  Mr.  Bayes  himself  :  — 

"And,  where  he  took  it  up,  resigns  the  bays." 

"  But  we  (defend  us !)  are  divine, 
[Not]  female,  but  madam  born,  and  come 
Prom  a  right-honorable  wombe."     (p.  115.) 

Here  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  ruined  both  sense  and  metre 
by  his  unhappy  "not."  We  should  read  "Fe- 
male, but  madam-born,"  meaning  clearly  enough 
"  we  are  women,  it  is  true,  but  of  another  race." 

"  In  every  hand  [let]  a  cup  be  found 
That  from  all  hearts  a  health  may  sound."     (p.  121.) 

Wrong  again,  and  the  inserted  "let"  ruinous  to 
the  measure.  Is  it  possible  that  Mr.  Hazlitt  does 
not  understand  so  common  an  English  construction 
as  this? 

"  First  told  thee  into  th'  ayre,  then  to  the  ground."     (p.  141.) 

Mr.  Hazlitt  inserts  the  "  to,"  which  is  not  in  the 
original,  from  another  version.  Lovelace  wrote 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  309 

"  ayer."  We  have  noted  two  other  cases  (pp.  203 
and  248)  where  he  makes  the  word  a  dissyllable. 
On  the  same  page  we  have  "  shewe's  "  changed  to 
"shew"  because  Mr.  Hazlitt  did  not  know  it 
meant  "  show  us  "  and  not  "  shows."  On  page  170, 
"  their  "  is  substituted  for  "  her,"  which  refers  to 
Lucasta,  and  could  refer  to  nothing  else. 

Mr.  Hazlitt  changes  "  quarrels  the  student  Mer- 
cury "  to  " quarrels  with"  not  knowing  that  quar- 
rels was  once  used  as  a  transitive  verb  (p.  189). 

Wherever  he  chances  to  notice  it,  Mr.  Hazlitt 
changes  the  verb  following  two  or  more  nouns  con- 
nected by  an  "  and  "  from  singular  to  plural.  For 
instance :  — 

"  You,  sir,  alone,  fame,  and  all  conquering  rhyme 
File  the  set  teeth,"  &c.,  (p.  224) 

for  "  files."  Lovelace  commonly  writes  so ;  —  on 
p.  181,  where  it  escaped  Mr.  Hazlitt's  grammatical 
eye,  we  find,  — 

"  But  broken  faith,  and  th'  cause  of  it, 
All  damning  gold,  was  damned  to  the  pit." 

Indeed,  it  was  usual  with  writers  of  that  day. 
Milton  in  one  of  his  sonnets  has  — 

"  Thy  worth  and  skill  exempts  thee  from  the  throng,"  — 

and  Leigh  Hunt,  for  the  sake  of  the  archaism,  in 
one  of  his,  "  Patience  and  Gentleness  is  power." 

Weariness,  and  not  want  of  matter,  compels  us 
to  desist  from  further  examples  of  Mr.  Hazlitt's 
emendations.  But  we  must  also  give  a  few  speci- 
mens of  his  notes,  and  of  the  care  with  which  he 
has  corrected  the  punctuation. 


310  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

In  a  note  on  "  flutes  of  canary"  (p.  76)  too  long 
to  quote,  Mr.  Hazlitt,  after  citing  the  glossary  of 
Nares  (edition  of  1859,  by  Wright  and  Halliwell, 
a  very  careless  book,  to  speak  mildly),  in  which 
flute,  is  conjectured  to  mean  cask,  says  that  he  is 
not  satisfied,  but  adds,  "  I  suspect  that  a  flute  of 
canary  was  so  called  from  the  cask  having  several 
vent-holes."  But  flute  means  simply  a  tall  glass. 
Lassel,  describing  the  glass-making  at  Murano, 
says,  "  For  the  High  Dutch  they  have  high  glasses 
called  Flutes,  a  full  yard  long."  So  in  Dryden's 
Sir  Martin  Mar-all,  "  bring  two  flute-glasses  and 
some  stools,  ho !  We  '11  have  the  ladies'  health." 
The  origin  of  the  word,  though  doubtful,  is  prob- 
ably nearer  to  flood  than  flute,.  But  conceive  of 
two  gentlemen,  members  of  one  knows  not  how 
many  learned  societies,  like  Messrs.  Wright  and 
Halliwell,  pretending  to  edit  Nares,  when  they 
query  a  word  which  they  could  have  found  in  any 
French  or  German  Dictionary ! 

On  page  93  we  have,  — 

"  Hayle,  holy  cold !  chaste  temper,  hayle !  the  fire 
Raved  o'er  my  purer  thoughts  I  feel  t'  expire." 

Mr.  Hazlitt  annotates  thus :  "  Ravd  seems  here  to 
be  equivalent  to  reai^d  or  bereaved.  Perhaps  the 
correct  reading  may  be  '  reav'd.'  See  Worcester's 
Dictionary,  art.  RAVE,  where  Menage's  supposition 
of  affinity  between  rave  and  bereave  is  perhaps  a 
little  too  slightingly  treated." 

The  meaning  of  Lovelace  was,  "  the  fire  that 
raved."  But  what  Mr.  Hazlitt  would  make  with 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  311 

"  reaved  o'er  my  purer  thoughts,"  we  cannot  con- 
ceive. On  the  whole,  we  think  he  must  have  writ- 
ten the  note  merely  to  make  his  surprising  glosso- 
logical  suggestion.  All  that  Worcester  does  for 
the  etymology,  by  the  way,  is  to  cite  Richardson, 
no  safe  guide. 

"Where  now  one  so  so  spatters,  t'other:  no!  "    (p.  112..) 

The  comma  in  this  verse  has,  of  course,  no  right 
there,  but  Mr.  Hazlitt  leaves  the  whole  passage  so 
corrupt  that  we  cannot  spend  time  in  disinfecting 
it.  We  quote  it  only  for  the  sake  of  his  note  on 
"  so  so."  It  is  marvellous. 

"  An  exclamation  of  approval  when  an  actor  made  a 
hit.  The  corruption  seems  to  be  somewhat  akin  to  the 
Italian,  '  si,  si,'  a  corruption  of  '  sia,  sia.'  " 

That  the  editor  of  an  English  poet  need  not  un- 
derstand Italian  we  may  grant,  but  that  he  should 
not  know  the  meaning  of  a  phrase  so  common  in 
his  own  language  as  so-so  is  intolerable.  Lovelace 
has  been  saying  that  a  certain  play  might  have 
gained  applause  under  certain  circumstances,  but 
that  everybody  calls  it  so-so,  —  something  very 
different  from  "  an  exclamation  of  approval,"  one 
should  say.  The  phrase  answers  exactly  to  the 
Italian  cosi  cosi,  while  si  (not  si)  is  derived  from 
sic,  and  is  analogous  with  the  affirmative  use  of  the 
German  so  and  the  Yankee  jes'  so. 

"Oh,  how  he  hast'ned  death,  burnt  to  be  fryed !  "     (p.  141.) 

The  note  on  fryed  is,  — 

"  I.  e.  freed.     Free  and  freed  were  sometimes  pro- 


312  LIBRARY  OF   OLD  AUTHORS 

nounced  like  fry   and  fryed ;  for  Lord  North,  in  his 
Forest  of  Varieties,  1645,  has  these  lines  :  — 

'  Birds  that  long  Lave  lived  free, 
Caught  and  cag'd,  but  pine  and  die.' 

Here  evidently  free  is  intended  to  rhyme  with  die." 

"  Evidently ! "  An  instance  of  the  unsaf eness  of 
rhyme  as  a  guide  to  pronunciation.  It  was  die 
that  had  the  sound  of  dee,  as  everybody  (but  Mr. 
Hazlitt)  knows.  Lovelace  himself  rhymes  die  and 
she  on  p.  269.  But  what  shall  we  say  to  our  edi- 
tor's not  knowing  that//-?/  was  used  formerly  where 
we  should  say  burn  ?  Lovers  used  to  fry  with 
love,  whereas  now  they  have  got  out  of  the  frying- 
pan  into  the  fire.  In  this  case  a  martyr  is  repre- 
sented as  burning  (i.  e.  longing)  to  be  fried  (i.  e. 
burned). 

"  Her  beams  ne'er  shed  or  change  like  th'  hair  of  day."     (p.  224.) 

Mr.  Hazlitt's  note  is,  — 

"  Hair  is  here  used  in  what  has  become  quite  an  ob- 
solete sense.  The  meaning  is  outward  form,  nature,  or 
character.  The  word  used  to  be  by  no  means  uncom- 
mon;  but  it  is  now,  as  was  before  remarked,  out  of 
fashion  ;  and  indeed  I  do  not  think  that  it  is  found  even 
in  any  old  writer  used  exactly  in  the  way  in  which  Love- 
lace has  employed  it." 

We  should  think  not,  as  Mr.  Hazlitt  understands 
it !  Did  he  never  hear  of  the  golden  hair  of  Apollo, 
—  of  the  intonsum  Cynthium  ?  Don  Quixote  was  a 
better  scholar  where  he  speaks  of  las  doradas  Jiebras 
de  sus  hermosos  cabellos.  But  hair  never  meant 
what  Mr.  Hazlitt  says  it  does,  even  when  used  as 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  313 

he  supposes  it  to  be  here.  It  had  nothing  to  do 
with  "  outward  form,  nature,  or  character,"  but 
had  a  meaning  much  nearer  what  we  express  by 
temperament,  which  its  color  was  and  is  thought  to 
indicate. 

On  p.  232  "wild  ink"  is  explained  to  mean 
" unrefined"  It'is  a  mere  misprint  for  " mid" 

Page  237,  Mr.  Hazlitt,  explaining  an  allusion  of 
Lovelace  to  the  "east  and  west"  in  speaking  of 
George  Sandys,  mentions  Sandys's  Oriental  travels, 
but  seems  not  to  know  that  he  translated  Ovid  in 
Virginia. 

Pages  251,  252:  — 

"  And  as  that  soldier  conquest  doubted  not, 
Who  but  one  splinter  had  of  Castriot, 
But  would  assault  ev'n  death,  so  strongly  charmed, 
And  naked  oppose  rocks,  with  this  bone  armed." 

Mr.  Hazlitt  reads  his  for  this  in  the  last  verse,  and 
his  note  on  "  bone  "  is :  — 

"And  he  found  a  new  jawbone  of  an  ass,  and  put 
forth  his  hand  and  took  it,  and  slew  a  thousand  men 
therewith.  (Judges  xv.  15.)" 

Could  the  farce  of  "  editing  "  go  further  ?  To 
make  a  "  splinter  of  Castriot "  an  ass's  jawbone  is 
a  little  too  bad.  We  refer  Mr.  Hazlitt  to  "The 
Life  of  George  Castriot,  King  of  Epirus  and 
Albania,"  &c.,  &c.,  (Edinburgh,  1753,)  p.  32,  for 
an  explanation  of  this  profound  difficulty.  He  will 
there  find  that  the  Turkish  soldiers  wore  relics  of 
Scanderbeg  as  charms. 

Perhaps  Mr.  Hazlitt's  most  astounding  note  is 
on  the  word  |?ic&ear  (p.  203). 


314  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

"  So  within  shot  she  doth  pickear, 
Now  gall's  [galls]  the  flank  and  now  the  rear." 

"  In  the  sense  in  which  it  is  here  used  this  word 
seems  to  be  peculiar  to  Lovelace.  To  pickear^  or 
pickeer,  means  to  skirmish"  And,  pray,  what 
other  possible  meaning  can  it  have  here  ? 

Of  his  corrections  of  the  press  we  will  correct  a 
few  samples. 

Page  34,  for  "Love  nee're  his  standard,"  read 
"  neere."  Page  82,  for  "  fall  too,"  read  " faU  to" 
(or,  as  we  ought  to  print  such  words,  "  fall-to  "). 
Page  83,  for  "star-made  firmament,"  read  "star, 
made  firmament."  Page  161,  for  "  To  look  their 
enemies  in  their  hearse,"  read,  both  for  sense  and 
metre,  into.  Page  176,  for  "  the  gods  have  kneeled," 
read  had.  Page  182,  for  "  In  beds  they  tumbled 
off  their  own,"  read  of.  Page  184,  for  "  in  mine 
one  monument  I  lie,"  read  owne.  Page  212,  for 
"  Deucalion's  6/acMung  stone,"  read  "  backflung." 
Of  the  punctuation  we  shall  give  but  one  specimen, 
and  that  a  fair  average  one :  — 

"Naso  to  his  Tibullus  flung  the  wreath, 
He  to  Catullus  thus  did  each  bequeath. 
This  glorious  circle,  to  another  round, 
At  last  the  temples  of  a  god  it  bound." 

Our  readers  over  ten  years  of  age  will  easily 
correct  this  for  themselves. 

Time  brings  to  obscure  authors 1  an  odd  kind  of 
reparation,  an  immortality,  not  of  love  and  interest 
and  admiration,  but  of  curiosity  merely.  In  pro- 

1  Early  Popular  Poetry.     Edited  by  W.  Carew  Hazlitt. 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  315 

portion  as  their  language  was  uncouth,  provincial, 
or  even  barbarous,  their  value  becomes  the  greater. 
A  book  of  which  only  a  single  copy  escaped  its 
natural  enemies,  the  pastry-cook  and  trunk-maker, 
may  contain  one  word  that  makes  daylight  in  some 
dark  passage  of  a  great  author,  and  its  name  shall 
accordingly  live  forever  in  a  note.  Is  not,  then,  a 
scholiastic  athanasy  better  than  none  ?  And  if  lit- 
erary vanity  survive  death,  or  even  worse,  as  Bru- 
nette Latini's  made  him  insensible  for  a  moment  to 
the  rain  of  fire  and  the  burning  sand,  the  authors 
of  such  books  as  are  not  properly  literature  may 
still  comfort  themselves  with  a  non  omnis  moriar, 
laying  a  mournful  emphasis  on  the  adjective,  and 
feeling  that  they  have  not  lived  wholly  in  vain 
while  they  share  with  the  dodo  a  fragmentary  con- 
tinuance on  earth.  To  be  sure,  the  immortality, 
such  as  it  is,  belongs  less  to  themselves  than  to  the 
famous  men  they  help  to  illustrate.  If  they  escape 
oblivion,  it  is  by  a  back  door,  as  it  were,  and  they 
survive  only  in  fine  print  at  the  page's  foot.  At 
the  banquet  of  fame  they  sit  below  the  salt.  After 
all,  perhaps,  the  next  best  thing  to  being  famous  or 
infamous  is  to  be  utterly  forgotten,  for  this  also  is 
to  achieve  a  kind  of  definite  result  by  living.  To 
hang  on  the  perilous  edge  of  immortality  by  the 
nails,  liable  at  any  moment  to  drop  into  the  fathom- 
less ooze  of  oblivion,  is  at  best  a  questionable 
beatitude.  And  yet  sometimes  the  merest  barnacles 
that  have  attached  themselves  to  the  stately  keels 
of  Dante  or  Shakespeare  or  Milton  have  an  inter- 
est of  their  own  by  letting  us  know  in  what  remote 


316  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

waters  those  hardy  navigators  went  a  pearl-fishing. 
Has  not  Mr.  Dyce  traced  Shakespeare's  "dusty 
death "  to  Anthony  Copley,  and  Milton's  "  back 
resounded  Death !  "  to  Abraham  Fraunce  ?  Nay, 
is  it  not  Bernard  de  Ventadour's  lark  that  sings 
forever  in  the  diviner  air  of  Dante's  Paradise  ? 

"  Quan  vey  laudeta  mover 
De  joi  sas  alas  contra'l  rai, 
Que  s'oblida  e  a  laissa  cazer 
Per  la  doussor  qu  'al  cor  li  'n  vaL" 

"  Qual  lodoletta  che  in  aere  si  spazia, 
Prima  cantando,  e  poi  tace  contents 
Dell'  ultima  dolcezza  che  la  sazia." 

We  are  not  sure  that  Bernard's  "  Que  s'oblida 
e  s  laissa  cazer  "  is  not  sweeter  than  Dante's  "  tace 
contenta,"  but  it  was  plainly  the  doussor  that  gave 
its  cue  to  the  greater  poet's  memory,  and  he  has 
improved  on  it  with  that  exquisite  ultima,  as  his 
master  Virgil  sometimes  did  on  Homer. 

But  authors  whose  interest  for  us  is  mainly  bib- 
liographic belong  rather  in  such  collections  as  Mr. 
Allibone's.  As  literature  they  are  oppressive ;  as 
items  of  literary  history  they  find  their  place  in  that 
vast  list  which  records  not  only  those  named  for 
promotion,  but  also  the  killed,  wounded,  and  miss- 
ing in  the  Battle  of  the  Books.  There  our  hearts 
are  touched  with  something  of  the  same  vague 
pathos  that  dims  the  eye  in  some  deserted  grave- 
yard. The  brief  span  of  our  earthly  immortalities 
is  brought  home  to  us  as  nowhere  else.  What  a 
necrology  of  notability !  How  many  a  controversi- 
alist, terrible  in  his  day,  how  many  a  rising  genius 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  317 

that  somehow  stuck  on  the  horizon,  how  many  a 
withering  satirist,  lies  here  shrunk  all  away  to  the 
tombstone  brevity  of  a  name  and  date !  Think  of 
the  aspirations,  the  dreams,  the  hopes,  the  toil,  the 
confidence  (of  himself  and  wife)  in  an  impartial 
and  generous  posterity,  —  and  then  read  "  Smith 
J.  [ohn  ?]  1713  -  1784  (?).  The  Vision  of  Immor- 
tality, an  Epique  Poem  in  twelve  books,  1740,  4to. 
See  Lowndes."  The  time  of  his  own  death  less 
certain  than  that  of  his  poem,  (which  we  may  fix 
pretty  safely  in  1740,)  and  the  only  posterity  that 
took  any  interest  in  him  the  indefatigable  compiler 
to  whom  a  name  was  valuable  in  proportion  as  it 
was  obscure.  Well,  to  have  even  so  much  as  your 
title-page  read  after  it  has  rounded  the  corner  of 
its  first  century,  and  to  enjoy  a  posthumous  public 
of  one  is  better  than  nothing.  This  is  the  true 
Valhalla  of  Mediocrity,  the  Libra  d1  oro  of  the 
onymi-anonymi,  of  the  never-named  authors  who 
exist  only  in  name.  Parson  Adams  would  be  here 
had  he  found  a  printer  for  his  sermons,  and  Mr. 
Primrose,  if  a  copy  existed  of  his  tracts  on  mono- 
gamy. Papyrorcetes  junior  will  turn  here  with 
justifiable  pride  to  the  name  of  his  respectable  pro- 
genitor. Here  we  are  secure  of  perpetuity  at  least, 
if  of  nothing  better,  and  are  sons,  though  we  may 
not  be  heirs,  of  fame.  Here  is  a  handy  and  inex- 
pensive substitute  for  the  waxen  imagines  of  the 
Roman  patriciate,  for  those  must  have  been  incon- 
venient to  pack  on  a  change  of  lodgings,  liable  to 
melt  in  warm  weather  (even  the  elder  Brutus  him- 
self might  soften  in  the  dog-days)  and  not  readily 


318  LIBRARY   OF   OLD  AUTHORS 

salable  unless  to  some  novus  homo  willing  to  buy  a 
set  of  ancestors  ready-made,  as  some  of  our  own 
enthusiasts  in  genealogy  are  said  to  order  a  family- 
tree  from  the  heraldic  nurseryman,  skilled  to  imp  a 
slip  of  Scroggins  on  a  stock  of  De  Vere  or  Mont- 
morenci.  Fame,  it  should  seem,  like  electricity,  is 
both  positive  and  negative,  and  if  a  writer  must  be 
Somebody  to  make  himself  of  permanent  interest  to 
the  world  at  large,  he  must  not  less  be  Nobody  to 
have  his  namelessness  embalmed  by  M.  Guerard. 
The  benignity  of  Providence  is  nowhere  more 
clearly  to  be  seen  than  in  its  compensations.  As 
there  is  a  large  class  of  men  madly  desirous  to 
decipher  cuneiform  and  other  inscriptions,  simply 
because  of  their  illegibility,  so  there  is  another 
class  driven  by  a  like  irresistible  instinct  to  the 
reprinting  of  unreadable  books.  Whether  these 
have  even  a  philologic  value  for  us  depends  on  the 
accuracy  and  learning  bestowed  upon  them  by  the 
editor. 

For  there  is  scarcely  any  rubbish-heap  of  liter- 
ature out  of  which  something  precious  may  not  be 
raked  by  the  diligent  explorer,  and  the  late  Mr. 
Dyce  (since  Gifford,  the  best  editor  of  our  liter- 
ature of  the  Tudor  and  Jacobean  periods)  might 
well  be  called  the  Golden  Dustman,  so  many  were 
the  precious  trifles  sifted  out  by  his  intelligent  in- 
dustry. It  would  not  be  easy  to  name  any  work 
more  thoroughly  done  than  his  edition  of  Skelton. 
He  was  not  a  philologist  in  the  stricter  sense,  but 
no  man  had  such  a  commonplace-book  as  he,  or 
knew  so  exactly  the  meaning  with  which  words 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  319 

were  used  during  the  period  he  did  so  much  to 
illustrate.  Elegant  scholarship  is  not  often,  as  in 
him,  patient  of  drudgery  and  conscientious  in  pains- 
taking. Between  such  a  man  and  Mr.  Carew  Haz- 
litt  the  contrast  is  by  no  means  agreeable.  The 
one  was  not  more  distinguished  by  modest  accuracy 
than  the  other  is  by  the  rash  conceit  of  that  half- 
knowledge  which  is  more  mischievous  in  an  editor 
than  downright  ignorance.  This  language  is  strong 
because  it  is  true,  though  we  should  not  have  felt 
called  upon  to  use  it  but  for  the  vulgar  flippancy 
with  which  Mr.  Hazlitt  alludes  depreciatingly  to 
the  labors  of  his  predecessors,  —  to  such  men  as 
Ritson,  Utterson,  Wright,  and  Sir  Frederick  Mad- 
den, his  superiors  in  everything  that  goes  to  the 
making  of  a  good  editor.  Most  of  them  are  now 
dead  and  nailed  in  their  chests,  and  it  is  not  for  us 
to  forget  the  great  debt  we  owe  to  them,  and  others 
like  them,  who  first  opened  paths  for  us  through 
the  tangled  wilderness  of  our  early  literature.  A 
modern  editor,  with  his  ready-made  helps  of  glos- 
sary, annotation,  and  comment,  should  think  rather 
of  the  difficulties  than  the  defects  of  these  pioneers. 
How  different  is  Mr.  Hazlitt's  spirit  from  that 
of  the  thorough  and  therefore  modest  scholar !  In 
the  Preface  to  his  Altenglische  Sprachproben, 
Miitzner  says  of  an  editor,  das  Beste  was  er  ist 
verdanh  er  Andern,  an  accidental  pentameter  that 
might  seem  to  have  dropped  out  of  Nathan  der 
Weise.  Mr.  Hazlitt  would  profit  much  by  getting 
some  friend  to  translate  for  him  the  whole  para- 
graph in  which  it  occurs. 


820  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

We  see  it  announced  that  Mr.  Hazlitt  is  to 
superintend  a  new  edition  of  Warton's  History  of 
English  Poetry,  and  are  pained  to  think  of  the 
treatment  that  robust  scholar  and  genial  poet  is 
likely  to  receive  at  the  hands  of  an  editor  without 
taste,  discrimination,  or  learning.  Of  his  taste  a 
single  specimen  may  suffice.  He  tells  us  that  "  in 
an  artistic  and  constructive  point  of  view,  the 
Mylner  of  Abington  is  superior  to  its  predeces- 
sor," that  predecessor  being  Chaucer's  Revels  Tale, 
which,  with  his  usual  inaccuracy,  he  assigns  to  the 
Miller  1  Of  his  discrimination  we  have  a  sufficient 
test  in  the  verses  he  has  fathered  upon  Herrick  in  a 
late  edition  of  the  most  graceful  of  our  lyric  poets. 
Perhaps  discrimination  is  not,  after  all,  the  right 
word,  for  we  have  sometimes  seen  cause  to  doubt 
whether  Mr.  Hazlitt  ever  reads  carefully  the  very 
documents  he  prints.  For  example,  in  the  Bio- 
graphical Notice  prefixed  to  the  Herrick  he  says 
Cp.  xvii)  :  "  Mr.  W.  Perry  Herrick  has  plausibly 
suggested  that  the  payments  made  by  Sir  William 
to  his  nephew  were  simply  on  account  of  the  for- 
tune which  belonged  to  Robert  in  right  of  his  father, 
and  which  his  uncle  held  in  trust ;  this  was  about 
£400;  and  I  think  from  allusions  in  the  letters 
printed  elsewhere  that  this  view  may  be  the  correct 
one."  May  be !  The  poet  says  expressly,  "  I  en- 
treat you  out  of  my  little  possession  to  deliver  to 
this  bearer  the  customarye  X10,  without  which  I 
cannot  meate  [?]  my  ioyrney."  The  words  we 
have  italicized  are  conclusive.  By  the  way,  Mr. 
Hazlitt's  wise-looking  query  after  "  meate  "  is  con- 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  321 

elusive  also  as  to  his  fitness  for  editorship.  Did  he 
never  hear  of  the  familiar  phrase  "  to  meet  the  ex- 
pense"? If  so  trifling  a  misspelling  can  mystify 
him,  what  must  be  the  condition  of  his  mind  in 
face  of  the  more  than  Protean  travesties  which 
words  underwent  before  they  were  uniformed  by 
Johnson  and  Walker  ?  Mr.  Hazlitt's  mind,  to  be 
sure,  like  the  wind  Cecias,  always  finds  its  own 
fog.  In  another  of  Herrick's  letters  we  find,  "  For 
what  her  monie  can  be  effected  (s^c)  when  there  is 
diuision  'twixt  the  hart  and  hand  ?  "  "  Her  monie  " 
of  course  means  harmonie,  and  effected  is  therefore 
right.  What  Mr.  Hazlitt  may  have  meant  by  his 
"  (sic)  "  it  were  idle  to  inquire. 

We  have  already  had  occasion  to  examine  some 
of  Mr.  Hazlitt's  work,  and  we  are  sorry  to  say  that 
in  the  four  volumes  before  us  we  find  no  reason  for 
changing  our  opinion  of  his  utter  disqualification 
for  the  duties  of  editorship.  He  seldom  clears  up 
a  real  difficulty  (never,  we  might  say,  with  lights 
of  his  own),  he  frequently  creates  a  darkness  where 
none  was  before,  and  the  peculiar  bumptiousness  of 
his  incapacity  makes  it  particularly  offensive.  We 
shall  bring  a  few  instances  in  proof  of  what  we 
assert,  our  only  embarrassment  being  in  the  super- 
abundance of  our  material.  In  the  Introduction  to 
the  second  volume  of  his  collection,  Mr.  Hazlitt 
speaks  of  "  the  utter  want  of  common  care  on  the 
part  of  previous  editors  of  our  old  poetry."  Such 
oversights  as  he  has  remarked  upon  in  his  notes 
are  commonly  errors  of  the  press,  a  point  on  which 
Mr.  Hazlitt,  of  all  men,  should  have  been  char- 


322  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

itable,  for  his  own  volumes  are  full  of  them.  We 
call  his  attention  to  one  such  which  is  rather  amus- 
ing. In  his  "  additional  notes  "  we  find  "  line  77, 
wylle.  Strike  out  the  note  upon  this  word ;  but 
the  explanation  is  correct.  Be  wroght  was  a  mis- 
print, however,  for  he  wroght"  The  error  occurs 
in  a  citation  of  three  lines  in  which  lother  is  still 
left  for  father.  The  original  note  affords  us  so 
good  an  example  of  Mr.  Hazlitt's  style  of  editing 
as  to  be  worth  preserving.  In  the  "  Kyng  and  the 
Hermit "  we  read,  — 

"  He  ne  wyst  -wjlijere  that  lie  was 
Ne  out  of  the  forest  for  to  passe, 
And  thus  he  rode  all  wylle." 

And  here  is  Mr.  Hazlitt's  annotation  on  the  word 
wylle  :  — 

"  L  e.  evil.  In  a  MS.  of  the  Tale  of  the  Basyn, 
supposed  by  Mr.  Wright,  who  edited  it  in  1836,  to 
be  written  in  the  Salopian  dialect,  are  the  following 
lines :  — 

'  The  lother  hade  litull  thoght, 
Off  husbandry  cowth  he  noght, 
But  alle  his  wyves  will  be  wroght.'  "     (Vol.  i.  p.  16.) 

It  is  plain  that  he  supposed  will,  in  this  very  simple 
passage,  to  mean  evil !  This  he  would  seem  to 
rectify,  but  at  the  same  time  takes  care  to  tell  us 
that  "  the  explanation  [of  wylle~\  is  correct."  He 
is  willing  to  give  up  one  blunder,  if  only  he  may 
have  one  left  to  comfort  himself  withal !  Wylle  is 
simply  a  rhyming  fetch  for  wild,  and  the  passage 
means  that  the  king  rode  at  random.  The  use  of 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD  AUTHORS  323 

wild  with  this  meaning  is  still  common  in  such 
phrases  as  "he  struck  wild."  In  "Havelok"  we 
find  it  in  the  nearly  related  sense  of  being  at  a 
loss,  knowing  not  what  to  do :  — 

"  To  lincolne  barf ot  he  yede 
Hwan  he  kam  ther  he  was  fnl  uril, 
Ne  hauede  he  no  frend  to  gangen  tiL" 

All  ivylle,  in  short,  means  the  kind  of  editing  that 
is  likely  to  be  done  by  a  gentleman  who  picks  up 
his  misinformation  as  he  goes  along.  We  would 
hint  that  a  person  must  know  something  before  he 
can  use  even  a  glossary  with  safety. 

In  the  "  King  and  the  Barker,"  when  the  tanner 
finds  out  that  it  is  the  king  whom  he  has  been 
treating  so  familiarly,  and  falls  upon  his  knees, 
Mr.  Hazlitt  prints, 

"  He  had  no  meynde  of  hes  hode,  nor  cape,  ne  radell," 

and  subjoins  the  following  note  :  "  Radell,  or  rad- 
dle, signifies  a  side  of  a  cart ;  but  here,  appar- 
ently, stands  for  the  cart  itself.  Ritson  printed  ner 
adell."  Mr.  Hazlitt's  explanation  of  raddle,  which 
he  got  from  Halliwell,  is  incorrect.  The  word,  as 
its  derivation  (from  O.  F.  rasteT)  implies,  means 
the  side  or  end  of  a  hay-cart,  in  which  the  uprights 
are  set  like  the  teeth  of  a  rake.  But  what  has  a 
cart  to  do  here  ?  There  is  perhaps  a  touch  of  what 
an  editor  of  old  doggerel  would  benignantly  call 
humor,  in  the  tanner's  forgetfulness  of  his  raiment, 
but  the  cart  is  as  little  to  the  purpose  as  one  of 
Mr.  Hazlitt's  own  notes.  The  tanner  was  on  horse- 
back, as  the  roads  of  the  period  required  that  he 


324  LIBRARY  OF   OLD  AUTHORS 

should  be,  and  good  old  Ritson  was  plainly  on  the 
right  track  in  his  reading,  though  his  text  was 
muddled  by  a  misprint.  As  it  was,  he  got  one 
word  right,  and  so  far  has  the  advantage  of  Mr. 
Hazlitt.  The  true  reading  is,  of  course,  ner  a  dell, 
never  a  deal,  not  a  whit.  The  very  phrase  occurs 
in  another  poem  which  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  reprinted 
in  his  collection,  — 

"  For  never  a  dell 
He  wyll  me  love  agayne."     (Vol.  iii.  p.  2.) 

That  adell  was  a  misprint  in  Ritson  is  proved  by 
the  fact  that  the  word  does  not  appear  in  his  glos- 
sary. If  we  were  to  bring  Mr.  Hazlitt  to  book  for 
his  misprints !  In  the  poem  we  have  just  quoted 
he  gravely  prints,  — 

"Matter  in  dede, 
My  sides  did  blede," 

for  "  mother,  indede,"  "  through  ryght  wysenes  " 
for  "  though  ryghtwisenes,"  "  with  man  vnkynde  " 
for  "  sith  man  vnkynde,"  "  ye  knowe  a  parte  "  for 
"  ye  knowe  aperte,"  "  here  in  "  for  "  herein,"  all  of 
which  make  nonsense,  and  all  come  within  the  first 
one  hundred  and  fifty  lines,  and  those  of  the  short- 
est, mostly  of  four  syllables  each.  Perhaps  they 
rather  prove  ignorance  than  want  of  care.  One 
blunder  falling  within  the  same  limits  we  have  re- 
served for  special  comment,  because  it  affords  a 
good  example  of  Mr.  Hazlitt' s  style  of  editing :  — 

"  Your  herte  souerayne 
Clouen  in  twayne 
By  longes  the  blynde."     (Vol.  iii.  p.  7.) 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  325 

Here  the  uninstructed  reader  would  be  as  com- 
pletely in  the  dark  as  to  what  longes  meant  as  the 
editor  plainly  was  himself.  The  old  rhymer  no 
doubt  wrote  Longis,  meaning  thereby  Longinus,  a 
personage  familiar  enough,  one  should  think,  to 
any  reader  of  medieval  poetry.  Mr.  Hazlitt  ab- 
solves himself  for  not  having  supplied  a  glossary 
by  the  plea  that  none  is  needed  by  the  class  of 
readers  for  whom  his  volumes  are  intended.  But 
this  will  hardly  seem  a  valid  excuse  for  a  gentle- 
man who  often  goes  out  of  his  way  to  explain  in 
his  notes  such  simple  matters  as  that  "  shape " 
means  "form,"  and  that  "Johan  of  the  golden 
mouthe  "  means  "  St.  Chrysostom,"  which,  indeed, 
it  does  not,  any  more  than  Johannes  Baptista 
means  St.  Baptist.  We  will  supply  Mr.  Hazlitt 
with  an  illustration  of  the  passage  from  Bekker's 
Ferabras,  the  more  willingly  as  it  may  direct  his 
attention  to  a  shining  example  of  how  an  old 
poem  should  be  edited :  — 

"  en  la  crotz  vos  pendero  li  f als  luzieu  trnan, 
can  Longis  vos  f  eric  de  sa  lansa  trencan : 
el  non  avia  vist  en  trastot  son  vivao ; 
lo  sane  li  venc  per  1'asta  entro  al  punh  colan ; 
e  [el]  toquet  ne  sos  huelhs  si  vie  el  mantenan." 

Mr.  Hazlitt,  to  be  sure  (who  prints  sang  parlez 
for  sanz  parler~)  (vol.  i.  p.  265),  will  not  be  able 
to  form  any  notion  of  what  these  verses  mean,  but 
perhaps  he  will  be  able  to  draw  an  inference  from 
the  capital  L  that  longes  is  a  proper  name.  The 
word  truan  at  the  end  of  the  first  verse  of  our  cita- 
tion may  also  suggest  to  him  that  truant  is  not 


326  LIBRARY   OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

quite  so  satisfactory  an  explanation  of  the  word 
treicat  as  he  seems  to  think.  (Vol.  iv.  p.  24,  note.') 
In  deference  to  Mr.  Hazlitt's  presumed  familiarity 
with  an  author  sometimes  quoted  by  him  in  his 
notes,  we  will  point  him  to  another  illustration :  — 

"  Ac  ther  cam  forth  a  knyght, 
With  a  kene  spere  y-grounde 
Highte  Longeus,  as  the  lettre  telleth, 
And  longe  hadde  lore  his  sighte." 

Piers  Ploughman,  Wright,  p.  374. 

Mr.  Hazlitt  shows  to  peculiar  advantage  where 
Old  French  is  in  question.  Upon  the  word  Osyll 
he  favors  us  with  the  following  note  :  "  The  black- 
bird. In  East  Cornwall  ozell  is  used  to  signify  the 
windpipe,  and  thence  the  bird  may  have  had  its 
name,  as  Mr.  Couch  has  suggested  to  me."  (Vol. 
ii.  p.  25.)  Of  course  the  blackbird,  alone  among 
fowls,  is  distinguished  by  a  windpipe !  The  name 
is  merely  another  form  of  O.  F.  oisil,  and  was 
usurped  naturally  enough  by  one  of  the  commonest 
birds,  just  as  pajaro  (L.  passer)  in  Spanish,  by  a 
similar  process  in  the  opposite  direction,  came  to 
mean  bird  in  general.  On  the  very  next  page  he 
speaks  of  "  the  Romance  which  is  vulgarly  entitled 
Lybeaus  Disconus,  i.  e.  Le  Beau  Disconnu."  If 
he  had  corrected  Disconus  to  Desconus,  all  had 
been  well ;  but  Disconnu  neither  is  nor  ever  was 
French  at  all.  Where  there  is  blundering  to  be 
done,  one  stone  often  serves  Mr.  Hazlitt  for  two 
birds.  Ly  beaus  Disconus  is  perfectly  correct  old 
French,  and  another  form  of  the  adjective  (bins') 
perhaps  explains  the  sound  we  give  to  the  first  syl- 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  327 

lable  of  beauty  and  Beaufort.  A  barrister  at  law, 
as  Mr.  Hazlitt  is,  may  not  be  called  on  to  know 
anything  about  old  English  or  modern  French,  but 
we  might  fairly  expect  him  to  have  at  least  a  smat- 
tering of  Law  French !  In  volume  fourth,  page 
129,  a  goodman  trying  his  wife, 

"  Bad  her  take  the  pot  that  sod  ouer  the  fire 
And  set  it  abooue  vpon  the  astire." 

Mr.  Hazlitt's  note  upon  astire  is  "  hearth,  i.  q. 
astre."  Knowing  that  the  modern  French  was 
atre,  he  too  rashly  inferred  a  form  which  never  ex- 
isted except  in  Italian.  The  old  French  word  is 
aistre  or  estre,  but  Mr.  Hazlitt,  as  usual,  prefers 
something  that  is  neither  old  French  nor  new.  We 
do  not  pretend  to  know  what  astire  means,  but  a 
hearth  that  should  be  abooue  the  pot  seething  over 
the  fire  would  be  unusual,  to  say  the  least,  in  our 
semi-civilized  country. 

In  the  "  Lyfe  of  Roberte  the  Deuill "  (vol.  i.  p. 
232),  Mr.  Hazlitt  twice  makes  a  knight  sentre  his 
lance,  and  tells  us  in  a  note  that  the  "  Ed.  1798 
has  f entered,"  a  very  easy  misprint  for  the  right 
word  f entered.  What  Mr.  Hazlitt  supposed  to  be 
the  meaning  of  sentre  he  has  not  vouchsafed  to  tell 
us.  Fautre  (sometimes  faltre  orfeutre')  means  in 
old  French  the  rest  of  a  lance.  Thus  in  the  Roman 
du  Renart  (26517), 

"  Et  mist  sa  lance  sor  lefautre." 

But  it  also  meant  a  peculiar  kind  of  rest.  In  Sir 
F.  Madden's  edition  of  Gawayne  (to  which  Mr. 
Hazlitt  refers  occasionally)  we  read, 


328  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

"  Thejfeutred  their  lances,  these  knyghtes  good  "  ; 

and  in  the  same  editor's  "  William  and  the  Wer- 
wolf," 

"With  sper  festened  infeuter,  him  for  to  spille." 

In  a  note  on  the  latter  passage  Sir  F.  Madden  says, 
"  There  seems  no  reason,  however,  why  it  [f euter] 
should  not  mean  the  rest  attached  to  the  armour." 
But  Roquefort  was  certainly  right  in  calling  it  a 
"garniture  d'une  selle  pour  tenir  la  lance."  A 
spear  fastened  to  the  saddle  gave  more  deadly 
weight  to  the  blow.  The  "  him  for  to  spille  "  im- 
plies this.  So  in  "  Merlin  "  (E.  E.  Text  Soc.,  p. 
488)  :  "  Than  thei  toke  speres  grete  and  rude,  and 
putte  hem  in  fewtre,  and  that  is  the  grettest  crew- 
elte  that  oon  may  do,  ffor  turnement  oweth  to  be 
with-oute  felonye,  and  they  meved  to  smyte  hem  as 
in  mortal!  werre."  The  context  shows  that  the 
fewtre  turned  sport  into  earnest.  A  citation  in 
Raynouard's  Lexique  Roman  (though  wrongly  ex- 
plained by  him)  directed  us  to  a  passage  which 
proves  that  this  particular  kind  of  rest  for  the 
lance  was  attached  to  the  saddle,  in  order  to  ren- 
der the  blow  heavier  :  — 

"  Lances  a  [lege  as]  argons  af  entries 
Pour  plus  de  dures  coltes  rendre." 

Branche  des  Royaux  Lignages,  4514,  4515. 

Mr.  Hazlitt,  as  we  have  said,  lets  no  occasion  slip 
to  insinuate  the  inaccuracy  and  carelessness  of  his 
predecessors.  The  long  and  useful  career  of  Mr. 
Wright,  who,  if  he  had  given  us  nothing  more  than 
his  excellent  edition  of  "Piers  Ploughman"  and 
the  volume  of  "  Ancient  Vocabularies,"  would 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  329 

have  deserved  the  gratitude  of  all  lovers  of  our  lit- 
erature or  students  of  our  language,  does  not  save 
him  from  the  severe  justice  of  Mr.  Hazlitt,  nor  is 
the  name  of  Warton  too  venerable  to  be  coupled 
with  a  derogatory  innuendo.  Mr.  Wright  needs  no 
plea  in  abatement  from  us,  and  a  mischance  of  Mr. 
Hazlitt's  own  has  comically  avenged  Warton.  The 
word  prayer,  it  seems,  had  somehow  substituted  it- 
self for  prayse  in  a  citation  by  Warton  of  the  title 
of  the  "  Schole-House  of  Women."  Mr.  Hazlitt 
thereupon  takes  occasion  to  charge  him  with  often 
"  speaking  at  random,"  and  after  suggesting  that 
it  might  have  been  the  blunder  of  a  copyist,  adds, 
"  or  it  is  by  no  means  impossible  that  Warton  him- 
self, having  been  allowed  to  inspect  the  production, 
was  guilty  of  this  oversight."  (Vol.  iv.  p.  98.) 
Now,  on  the  three  hundred  and  eighteenth  page  of 
the  same  volume,  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  allowed  the  fol- 
lowing couplet  to  escape  his  conscientious  attention : 

"  Next,  that  no  gallant  should  not  ought  suppose 
That  prayers  and  glory  doth  consist  in  cloathes." 

Lege,  nostro  periculo,  PRAYSE  !  Were  dear  old 
Tom  still  on  earth,  he  might  light  his  pipe  cheer- 
fully with  any  one  of  Mr.  Hazlitt's  pages,  secure 
that  in  so  doing  he  was  consuming  a  brace  of  blun- 
ders at  the  least.  The  word  prayer  is  an  unlucky 
one  for  Mr.  Hazlitt.  In  the  "  Knyght  and  his 
Wyfe  "  (vol.  ii.  p.  18)  he  prints  :  — 

"  And  sayd,  Syre,  I  rede  -we  make 
In  this  chapel  oure  prayers, 
That  God  us  kepe  both  in  ferrus." 

Why  did  not  Mr.  Hazlitt,  who  explains  so  many 


330  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

things  that  everybody  knows,  give  us  a  note  upon 
inferrus  ?  It  would  have  matched  his  admirable 
elucidation  of  waygose,  which  we  shall  notice  pre- 
sently. Is  it  not  barely  possible  that  the  MS.  may 
have  read  pray  ere  and  in  fere  ?  Prayere  occurs 
two  verses  further  on,  and  not  as  a  rhyme. 

Mr.  Hazlitt  even  sets  Sir  Frederick  Madden 
right  on  a  question  of  Old  English  grammar,  tell- 
ing him  superciliously  that  can,  with  an  infinitive, 
in  such  phrases  as  he  can  go,  is  used  not  "  to  de- 
note a  past  tense,  but  an  imperfect  tense."  By 
past  we  suppose  him  to  mean  perfect.  But  even 
if  an  imperfect  tense  were  not  a  past  one,  we  can 
show  by  a  passage  in  one  of  the  poems  in  this  very 
collection  that  can,  in  the  phrases  referred  to,  some- 
times not  only  denotes  a  past  but  a  perfect  tense  :  — 

"  And  thorow  that  worde  y  felle  in  pryde ; 
As  the  aungelle  can  of  hevyn  glyde, 
And  with  the  tywnkling  1  of  an  eye 
God  for-dad  alle  that  maystrye 
And  so  hath  he  done  for  my  gylte." 

Now  the  angel  here  is  Lucifer,  and  can  of  hevyn 
glyde  means  simply  fell  from  heaven,  not  was  fall- 
ing. It  is  in  the  same  tense  asfor-dud  in  the  next 
line.  The  fall  of  the  angels  is  surely  a  fait  accom- 
pli. In  the  last  line,  by  the  way,  Mr.  Hazlitt 
changes  "  my  for  "  to  "  for  my,"  and  wrongly,  the 
my  agreeing  with  maystrye  understood.  In  mod- 
ern English  we  should  use  mine  in  the  same  way. 
But  Sir  Frederick  Madden  can  take  care  of  him- 
self. 

1  The  careless  Ritson  would  have  printed  this  twynkling. 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  331 

We  have  less  patience  with  Mr.  Hazlitt's  imper- 
tinence to  Ritson,  a  man  of  ample  reading  and  ex- 
cellent taste  in  selection,  and  who,  real  scholar  as 
he  was,  always  drew  from  original  sources.  We 
have  a  foible  for  Ritson  with  his  oddities  of  spell- 
ing, his  acerb  humor,  his  unconsciously  deprecia- 
tory mister  Tyrwhitts  and  mister  Bryants,  and  his 
obstinate  disbelief  in  Doctor  Percy's  folio  manu- 
script. Above  all,  he  was  a  most  conscientious  edi- 
tor, and  an  accurate  one  so  far  as  was  possible  with 
the  lights  of  that  day.  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  reprinted 
two  poems,  "  The  Squyr  of  Low  Degre  "  and  "  The 
Knight  of  Curtesy,"  which  had  already  been  edited 
by  Ritson.  The  former  of  these  has  passages  that 
are  unsurpassed  in  simple  beauty  by  anything  in 
our  earlier  poetry.  The  author  of  it  was  a  good  ver- 
sifier, and  Ritson,  though  he  corrected  some  glaring 
errors,  did  not  deal  so  trenchantly  with  verses  man- 
ifestly lamed  by  the  copyist  as  perhaps  an  editor 
should.1  Mr.  Hazlitt  says  of  Ritson's  text,  that 
"  it  offers  more  than  an  hundred  departures  from 
the  original,"  and  of  the  "Knight  of  Courtesy," 
that  "  Ritson's  text  is  by  no  means  accurate." 
Now  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  adopted  nearly  all  of  Ritson's 
emendations,  without  giving  the  least  hint  of  it. 
On  the  contrary,  in  some  five  or  six  instances,  he 
gives  the  original  reading  in  a  foot-note  with  an 
"  old  ed.  has  "  so  and  so,  thus  leaving  the  reader  to 

1  For  example :  — 

"  And  in  the  arber  was  a  tre 
A  fairer  in  the  world  might  none  be," 

should  certainly  read, 

"  None  fairer  in  the  world  might  be." 


332  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

infer  that  the  corrections  were  his  own.  Where 
he  has  not  followed  Kitson,  he  has  almost  uniformly 
blundered,  and  that  through  sheer  ignorance.  For 
example,  he  prints, 

"  Alas !  it  touraed  to  rvroth  her  heyle," 

where  Kitson  had  substituted  wrotherheyle.  The 
measure  shows  that  Ritson  was  right.  Wroth  her 
heyle,  moreover,  is  nonsense.  It  should  have  been 
WT 'other  her  heyle  at  any  rate,  but  the  text  is  far 
too  modern  to  admit  of  that  archaic  form.  In  the 
"  Debate  of  the  Body  and  the  Soul "  (Matzner's 
A.  E.  Sprachproben,  103)  we  have, 

"Why  schope  thou  me  to  wrother-hele," 

and  in  "  Dame  Siris  "  (Ibid.,  110), 

"  To  goder  hele  ever  came  thou  hider." 
Mr.  Hazlitt  prints, 

"  For  yf  it  may  be  found  in  thee 
That  thou  them  [de]  fame  for  enuyte." 

The  emendation  [de]  is  Ritson's,  and  is  probably 
right,  though  it  would  require,  for  the  metre's  sake, 
the  elision  of  that  at  the  beginning  of  the  verse. 
But  what  is  enuyte  ?  Ritson  reads  enmyte,  which 
is,  of  course,  the  true  reading.  Mr.  Hazlitt  prints 
(as  usual  either  without  apprehending  or  without 
regarding  the  sense), 

"  With  browes  bent  and  eyes  full  mery," 

where  Ritson  has  brent,  and  gives  parallel  passages 
in  his  note  on  the  word.  Mr.  Hazlitt  gives  us 

"  To  here  the  bugles  there  yblow, 
With  their  bugles  in  that  place," 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  333 

though  Ritson  had  made  the  proper  correction  to 
begles.  Mr.  Hazlitt,  with  ludicrous  nonchalance, 
allows  the  Squire  to  press  into  the  throng 

"With  a  bastard  large  and  longe," 

and  that  with  the  right  word  (jbaslarde)  staring 
him  in  the  face  from  Ritson's  text.  We  wonder 
he  did  not  give  us  an  illustrative  quotation  from 
Falconbridge !  Both  editors  have  allowed  some 
gross  errors  to  escape,  such  as  "come  not"  for 
"  come  "  (v.  425)  ;  "  so  leue  he  be  "  for  "  ye  be  " 
(v.  593)  ;  "  vnto  her  chambre  "  for  "  vnto  your " 
(v.  993)  ;  but  in  general  Ritson's  is  the  better  and 
more  intelligent  text  of  the  two.  In  the  "  Knight 
of  Curtesy,"  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  followed  Ritson's  text 
almost  literatim.  Indeed,  it  is  demonstrable  that 
he  gave  it  to  his  printers  as  copy  to  set  up  from. 
The  proof  is  this :  Ritson  has  accented  a  few  words 
ending  in  te.  Generally  he  uses  the  grave  accent, 
but  now  and  then  the  acute.  Mr.  Hazlitt's  text 
follows  all  these  variations  exactly.  The  main  dif- 
ference between  the  two  is  that  Ritson  prints  the 
first  personal  pronoun  «,  and  Mr.  Hazlitt,  I.  Rit- 
son is  probably  right ;  for  in  the  "  Schole-House  of 
Women  "  (vv.  537,  538)  where  the  text  no  doubt 
was 

"  i  [i.  e.  one]  deuil  a  woman  to  speak  may  constrain, 
But  all  that  in  hel  be  cannot  let  it  again," 

Mr.  Hazlitt  changes  "  i "  to  "  A,"  and  says  in  a 
note,  "  Old  ed.  has  7."  That  by  his  correction  he 
should  miss  the  point  was  only  natural ;  for  he  evi- 
dently conceives  that  the  sense  of  a  passage  does 
not  in  the  least  concern  an  editor.  An  instance  or 


334  LIBRARY   OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

two  will  suffice.  In  the  "  Knyght  and  his  Wyfe  " 
(vol.  ii.  p.  17)  we  read, 

"  The  fynd  tyl  hure  hade  myche  tene 
As  hit  was  a  sterfull  we  seme  1  " 

Mr.  Hazlitt  in  a  note  explains  tene  to  mean  "  trou- 
ble or  sorrow  "  ;  but  if  that  were  its  meaning  here, 
we  should  read  made,  and  not  hade,  which  would 
give  to  the  word  its  other  sense  of  attention.  The 
last  verse  of  the  couplet  Mr.  Hazlitt  seems  to 
think  perfectly  intelligible  as  it  stands.  We  should 
not  be  surprised  to  learn  that  he  looked  upon  it  as 
the  one  gem  that  gave  lustre  to  a  poem  otherwise 
of  the  dreariest.  We  fear  we  shall  rob  it  of  all 
its  charm  for  him  by  putting  it  into  modern  Eng- 
lish:— 

"  As  it  was  after  full  well  seen." 

So  in  the  "  Smyth  and  his  Dame "  (vol.  iii.  p. 
204)  we  read, 

"  It  were  a  lytele  maystry 
To  make  a  blynde  man  to  se," 

instead  of  "as  lytell."  It  might,  indeed,  be  as 
easy  to  perform  the  miracle  on  a  blind  man  as  on 
Mr.  Hazlitt.  Again,  in  the  same  poem,  a  little 
further  on, 

"  For  I  tell  the  now  treyely, 
Is  none  so  wyse  ne  to  sle, 
But  ever  ye  may  som  what  lere," 


which,  of  course,  should  be, 
"i 

But  ever  he  may  s< 

Worse  than  all,  Mr.  Hazlitt  tells  us  (vol.  i.  p.  158) 


"  ne  so  sle 
But  ever  he  may  som  what  lere.' 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  335 

that  when  they  bury  the  great  Khan,  they  lay  his 
body  in  a  tabernacle, 

"With  sheld  and  spere  and  other  wede 
With  a  whit  mere  to  gyf  him  in  ylke." 

We  will  let  Sir  John  Maundeville  correct  the  last 
verse :  "  And  they  seyn  that  when  he  shale  come 
into  another  World  .  .  .  the  mare  schalle  gheven 
him  mylk"  Mr.  Hazlitt  gives  us  some  wretched 
doggerel  by  "Piers  of  Fulham,"  and  gives  it 
swarming  with  blunders.  We  take  at  random  a 
couple  of  specimens :  — 

"  And  loveship  goith  ay  to  warke 
Where  that  presence  is  put  a  bake," 

(Vol.  ii.  pp.  13,  14,) 

where  we  should  read  "  love's  ship,"  "  wrake,"  and 
"  abake."  Again,  just  below, 

"Ffor  men  haue  seyn  here  to  foryn, 
That  love  laugh et  when  men  be  forsworn." 

Love  should  be  "  love."  Ovid  is  the  obscure  per- 
son alluded  to  in  the  "  men  here  to  foryn  " : 

"Jupiter  e  coelo  perjuria  ridet  amantum." 

We  dare  say  Mr.  Hazlitt,  if  he  ever  read  the  pas- 
sage, took  it  for  granted  that  "  to  foryn  "  meant 
too  foreign,  and  gave  it  up  in  despair.  But  surely 
Shakespeare's 

"  At  lovers'  perjuries, 
They  say,  Jove  laughs," 

is  not  too  foreign  to  have  put  him  on  the  right 
scent. 

Mr.  Hazlitt  is  so  particular  in  giving  us  v  for  u 


336  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

and  vice  versa,  that  such  oversights  are  a  little 
annoying.  Every  man  his  own  editor  seems  to  be 
his  theory  of  the  way  in  which  old  poetry  should 
be  reprinted.  On  this  plan,  the  more  riddles  you 
leave  (or  make)  for  the  reader  to  solve,  the  more 
pleasure  you  give  him.  To  correct  the  blunders  in 
any  book  edited  by  Mr.  Hazlitt  would  give  the 
young  student  a  pretty  thorough  training  in  ar- 
chaic English.  In  this  sense  the  volumes  before 
us  might  be  safely  recommended  to  colleges  and 
schools.  When  Mr.  Hazlitt  undertakes  to  cor- 
rect, he  is  pretty  sure  to  go  wrong.  For  example, 
in  "Doctour  Doubble  Ale"  (vol.  iii.  p.  309)  he 
amends  thus :  — 

"And  sometyme  mikle  strife  is 
Among  the  ale  wyfes,  [y-wis] ;  " 

where  the  original  is  right  as  it  stands.  Just  be- 
fore, in  the  same  poem,  we  have  a  parallel  in- 
stance :  — 

"And  doctonrs  dulpatis 
That  falsely  to  them  pratis, 
And  bring  them  to  the  gates." 

-The  original  probably  reads  (or  should  read)  wyfis 
and  gatis.  But  it  is  too  much  to  expect  of  Mr. 
Hazlitt  that  he  should  remember  the  very  poems 
he  is  editing  from  one  page  to  another,  nay,  as  we 
shall  presently  show,  that  he  should  even  read 
them.  He  will  change  be  into  ben  where  he  should 
have  let  it  alone  (though  his  own  volumes  might 
have  furnished  him  with  such  examples  as  "  were 
go,"  "  have  se,"  "  is  do,"  and  fifty  more),  but  he 
will  sternly  retain  bene  where  the  rhyme  requires 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  337 

be,  and  Bitson  had  so  printed.  In  "  Adam  Bel  " 
the  word  pry  me  occurs  (vol.  ii.  p.  140),  and  he 
vouchsafes  us  the  following  note  :  "  i.  e.  noon.  It 
is  commonly  used  by  early  writers  in  this  sense. 
In  the  Four  P.  P.,  by  John  Heywood,  circa  1540, 
the  apothecary  says, 

'  If  he  taste  this  boxe  nye  aboute  the  pryme 
By  the  masse,  he  is  in  heven  or  even  songe  tyme.'  " 

Let  our  readers  admire  with  us  the  easy  "  it  is  com- 
monly used  "  of  Mr.  Hazlitt,  as  if  he  had  store  of 
other  examples  in  his  note-book.  He  could  an  if 
he  would!  But  unhappily  he  borrowed  this  sin- 
gle quotation  from  Nares,  and,  as  usual,  it  throws 
no  scintilla  of  light  upon  the  point  in  question, 
for  his  habit  in  annotation  is  to  find  by  means 
of  a  glossary  some  passage  (or  passages  if  possi- 
ble) in  which  the  word  to  be  explained  occurs, 
and  then  —  why,  then  to  give  the  word  as  an  ex- 
planation of  itself.  But  in  this  instance,  Mr  Haz- 
litt, by  the  time  he  had  reached  the  middle  of 
his  next  volume  (vol.  iii.  p.  281)  had  wholly  for- 
gotten that  pryme  was  "commonly  used  by  early 
writers  "  for  noon,  and  in  a  note  on  the  following 
passage, 

"  I  know  not  whates  a  clocke 
But  by  the  countre  cocke, 
The  mone  nor  yet  the  pryme, 
Vntyll  the  sonne  do  shyne," 

he  informs  us  that  it  means  "six  o'clock  in  the 
morning"  !  Here  again  this  editor,  who  taxes 
Ritson  with  want  of  care,  prints  mone  for  none 
in  the  very  verse  he  is  annotating,  and  which  we 


338  LIBRARY  OF   OLD  AUTHORS 

may  therefore  presume  that  he  had  read.  A  man 
who  did  not  know  the  moon  till  the  sun  showed 
it  him  is  a  match  even  for  Mr.  Hazlitt  himself- 
We  wish  it  were  as  easy  as  he  seems  to  think 
it  to  settle  exactly  what  pryme  means  when  used 
by  our  "  early  writers,"  but  it  is  at  least  abso- 
lutely certain  that  it  did  not  mean  noon. 

But  Mr.  Hazlitt,  if  these  volumes  are  compe- 
tent witnesses,  knows  nothing  whatever  about  Eng- 
lish, old  or  new.  In  the  "  Mery  Jest  of  Dane 
Hew  "  he  finds  the  folio  whig  verses, 

"  Dame  he  said  what  shall  we  DOW  doo 
Sir  she  said  so  mote  go 
The  munk  in  a  corner  ye  shall  lay  " 

which  we  print  purposely  without  punctuation.  Mr. 
Hazlitt  prints  them  thus, 

*'  Dame,  he  said,  what  shall  we  now  doo  ? 
Sir,  she  said,  so  mote  [it]  go. 
The  munk,"  &c., 

and  gives  us  a  note  on  the  locution  he  has  in- 
vented to  this  effect,  "  ?  so  might  it  be  managed.*' 
And  the  Chancellor  said,  I  doubt!  Mr.  Hazlitt's 
query  makes  such  a  singular  exception  to  his  more 
natural  mood  of  immediate  inspiration  that  it  is 
almost  pathetic.  The  amended  verse,  as  every- 
body (not  confused  by  too  great  familiarity  with 
our  "  early  writers  ")  knows,  should  read, 

"  Sir,  she  said,  so  might  I  go," 

and  should  be  followed  only  by  a  comma,  to 
show  its  connection  with  the  next.  The  phrase 
"  so  mote  I  go,"  is  as  common  as  a  weed  in  the 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  339 

works  of  the  elder  poets,  both  French  and  Eng- 
lish ;  it  occurs  several  times  in  Mr.  Hazlitt's  own 
collection,  and  its  other  form,  "so  mote  I  fare," 
which  may  also  be  found  there,  explains  its  mean- 
ing. On  the  phrase  point-device  (vol.  iii.  p.  117) 
Mr.  Hazlitt  has  a  positively  incredible  note,  of 
which  we  copy  only  a  part :  "  This  term,  which  is 
commonly  used  in  early  poems  "  [mark  once  more 
his  intimacy  with  our  earlier  literature]  "to  sig- 
nify extreme  exactitude,  originated  in  the  points 
which  were  marked  on  the  astrolabe,  as  one  of  the 
means  which  the  astrologers  and  dabblers  in  the 
black  art  adopted  to  enable  them  (as  they  pre- 
tended) to  read  the  fortunes  of  those  by  whom  they 
were  consulted  in  the  stars  and  planetary  orbs. 
The  excessive  precision  which  was  held  to  be  re- 
quisite in  the  delineation  of  these  points "  [the 
delineation  of  a  point  is  good !]  "  &c.  on  the  astro- 
labe, led  to  point-device,  or  points-device  (as  it  is 
sometimes  found  spelled),  being  used  as  a  prover- 
bial expression  for  minute  accuracy  of  any  kind." 
Then  follows  a  quotation  from  Gower,  in  which  an 
astrolabe  is  spoken  of  "  with  points  and  cercles 
merveilous,"  and  the  note  proceeds  thus :  "  Shake- 
speare makes  use  of  a  similar  figure  of  speech  in 
the  Tempest,  I.  2,  where  the  following  dialogue 
takes  place  between  Prospero  and  Ariel :  — 

'  Prosp.     Hast  thou,  spirit, 

Perf onned  to  point  the  tempest  that  I  bade  thee  ? 
Ar.     In  every  article. '  ' ' 

Neither  the  proposed  etymology  nor  the  illustra- 
tion requires  any  remark  from  us.  We  will  only 


340  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

say  that  point-device  is  excellently  explained  and 
illustrated  by  Wedgwood. 

We  will  give  a  few  more  examples  out  of  many 
to  show  Mr.  Hazlitt's  utter  unfitness  for  the  task 
he  has  undertaken.  In  the  "  Kyng  and  the  Her- 
myt "  are  the  following  verses, 

"  A  wyld  wey,  I  hold,  it  were 
The  wey  to  wend,  I  you  swere, 
Bot  ye  the  dey  may  se," 

meaning  simply,  "I  think  it  would  be  a  wild 
thing  (in  you)  to  go  on  your  way  unless  you 
wait  for  daylight."  Mr.  Hazlitt  punctuates  and 
amends  thus :  — 

"  A  wyld  wey  I  hold  it  were, 
The  wey  to  wend,  I  you  swere, 
Ye  hot  [by]  the  dey  may  se."    (Vol.  i.  p.  19.) 

The  word  bot  seems  a  stumbling-block  to  Mr.  Haz- 
litt. On  page  54  of  the  same  volume  we  have, 

"  Herd  I  neuere  hi  no  lenedi 
Hote  hendinesse  and  curteysi." 

The  use  of  the  word  by  as  in  this  passage  should 
seem  familiar  enough,  and  yet  in  the  "  Hye  Way 
to  the  Spittel  Hous "  Mr.  Hazlitt  explains  it  as 
meaning  be.  Any  boy  knows  that  without  some- 
times means  unless  (Fielding  uses  it  often  in  that 
sense),  but  Mr.  Hazlitt  seems  unaware  of  the  fact. 
In  his  first  volume  (p.  224)  he  gravely  prints :  — 

"  They  trowed  verelye  that  she  shoulde  dye  ; 
With  that  our  ladye  wold  her  helpe  and  spede." 

The  semicolon  after  dye  shows  that  this  is  not  a 
misprint,  but  that  the  editor  saw  no  connection 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  341 

between  the  first  verse  and  the  second.  In  the 
same  volume  (p.  133)  we  have  the  verse, 

"  He  was  a  grete  tenement  man,  and  ryche  of  londe  and  lede," 

and  to  lede  Mr.  Hazlitt  appends  this  note :  "  Lede, 
in  early  English,  is  found  in  various  significa- 
tions, but  here  stands  as  the  plural  of  lad,  a  ser- 
vant." In  what  conceivable  sense  is  it  the  plural 
of  lad  ?  And  does  la d  necessarily  mean  a  servant  ? 
The  Promptorium  has  ladde  glossed  by  garcio, 
but  the  meaning  servant,  as  in  the  parallel  cases  of 
Trais,  puer,  garqon,  and  boy,  was  a  derivative  one, 
and  of  later  origin.  The  word  means  simply  man 
(in  the  generic  sense)  and  in  the  plural  people.  So 
in  the  "  Squyr  of  Low  Degre," 

"  I  will  forsake  both  land  and  lede," 
and  in  the  "  Smyth  and  his  Dame," 

"  That  hath  both  land  and  Igth." 

The  word  was  not  "  used  in  various  significations." 
Even  so  lately  as  "  Flodden  Ffeild  "  we  find, 

"  He  was  a  noble  leed  of  high  degree." 
Connected  with   land  it  was  a  commonplace   in 
German  as  well  as  in  English.     So  in  the  Tristan 
of  Godfrey  of  Strasburg, 

,,(Sr  6e»ale§  fin  I  i  B  t  enbe  fin  lant 
8ln  fines  marfcalteS  $ant." 

Mr.  Hazlitt  is  more  nearly  right  than  usual  when 
he  says  that  in  the  particular  case  cited  above  lede 
means  servants.  But  were  these  of  only  one  sex  ? 
Does  he  not  know  that  even  in  the  middle  of  the 
last  century  when  an  English  nobleman  spoke  of 
"  my  people,"  he  meant  simply  his  domestics  ? 


342  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

Encountering  the  familiar  phrase  No  do  !  (vol. 
iv.  p.  64),  Mr.  Hazlitt  changes  it  to  Not  do  !  He 
informs  us  that  Goddes  are  (vol.  i.  p.  197)  means 
"God's  heir  "  !  He  says  (vol.  ii.  p.  146)  :  "To  bor- 
row in  the  sense  of  to  take,  to  guard,  or  to  protect, 
is  so  common  in  early  English  that  it  is  unneces- 
sary to  bring  forward  any  illustration  of  its  use  in 
this  way."  But  he  relents,  and  presently  gives  us 
two  from  Ralph  Roister  Doister,  each  containing 
the  phrase  "  Saint  George  to  borrow !  "  That  60?'- 
row  means  take,  no  owner  of  books  need  be  told, 
and  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  shown  great  skill  in  borrow- 
ing other  people's  illustrations  for  his  notes,  but 
the  phrase  he  quotes  has  no  such  meaning  as  he 
gives  it.  Mr.  Dyce  in  a  note  on  Skelton  explains 
it  rightly,  "  St.  George  being  my  pledge  or  surety." 

We  gather  a  few  more  of  these  flowers  of  expo- 
sition and  etymology :  — 

"  The  while  thou  sittest  in  chirche,  thi  bedys  schalt  thou  bidde." 

(Vol.  i.  p.  181.) 

i.  e.  thou  shalt  offer  thy  prayers.  Mr.  Hazlitt's 
note  on  bidde  is,  "  i.  e.  bead.  So  in  The  Kyng  and 
the  Hermit,  line  111 :  — 

'  That  herd  an  hennyte  there  within 
Unto  the  gate  he  gan  to  wyn 
Bedying  his  prayer.'  " 

Precisely  what  Mr.  Hazlitt  understands  by  beading 
(or  indeed  by  anything  else)  we  shall  not  presume 
to  divine,  but  we  should  like  to  hear  him  translate 
"  if  any  man  bidde  the  worshyp,"  which  comes  a 
few  lines  further  on.  Now  let  us  turn  to  page  191 
of  the  same  volume.  "  May  deny  s  ben  loneliche  and 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  343 

no  thing  sekir."  Mr.  Hazlitt  tells  us  in  a  note  that 
"  sekir  or  sicker  "  is  a  very  common  form  of  secure, 
and  quotes  in  illustration  from  the  prose  Morte 
Arthurs,  "  A  !  said  Sir  Launcelot,  comfort  your- 
self e,  for  it  shall  bee  unto  us  as  a  great  honour,  and 
much  more  then  if  we  died  in  any  other  places :  for 
of  death  wee  be  sicker."  Now  in  the  text  the 
word  means  safe,  and  in  the  note  it  means  sure. 
Indeed  sure,  which  is  only  a  shorter  form  of  secure, 
is  its  ordinary  meaning.  "  I  mak  sicker,"  said 
Kirkpatrick,  a  not  unfitting  motto  for  certain  edi- 
tors, if  they  explained  it  in  their  usual  phonetic 
way. 

In  the  "  Frere  and  the  Boye,"  when  the  old  man 
has  given  the  boy  a  bow,  he  says :  — 

"  Shote  therin,  whan  thou  good  thynke ; 
For  yf  thou  shote  and  wynke, 
The  prycke  thow  shalte  hytte." 

Mr.  Hazlitt's  explanation  of  wynke  is  "  to  close 
one  eye  in  taking  aim,"  and  he  quotes  a  passage 
from  Gascoigne  in  support  of  it.  Whatever  Gas- 
coigne  meant  by  the  word  (which  is  very  doubt- 
ful), it  means  nothing  of  the  kind  here,  and  is  an- 
other proof  that  Mr.  Hazlitt  does  not  think  it  so 
important  to  understand  what  he  reads  as  St. 
Philip  did.  What  the  old  man  said  was,  "  even 
if  you  shut  both  your  eyes,  you  can't  help  hitting 
the  mark."  So  in  "  Piers  Ploughman  "  ( Whitaker's 
text), 

"  Wynkyng,  as  it  were,  wytterly  ich  saw  hyt." 

Again,  for  our  editor's  blunders  are  as  endless  as 


344  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

the  heads  of  an  old-fashioned  sermon,  in  the 
"  Schole-House  of  Women  "  (vol.  iv.  p.  130),  Mr. 
Hazlitt  has  a  note  on  the  phrase  "  make  it  nice," 

("  And  yet  alwaies  they  bible  bable 
Of  euery  matter  and  make  it  nice,") 

which  reads  thus  :  "  To  make  it  pleasant  or  smig. 
I  do  not  remember  to  have  seen  the  word  used  in 
this  sense  very  frequently.  But  Gascoigne  has  it 
in  a  precisely  similar 'way  :  — 

'  The  glosse  of  gorgeous  Courtes  by  thee  did  please  mine  eye, 
A  stately  sight  me  thought  it  was  to  see  the  braue  go  by, 
To  see  their  feathers  flaunte,  to  make  [marke !]  their  straunge 

deuise, 
To  lie  along  in  ladies  lappes,  to  lispe,  and  make  it  nice.'  " 

To  make  it  nice  means  nothing  more  nor  less 
than  to  play  the  fool,  or  rather,  to  make  a  fool  of 
yourself, faire  le  niais.  In  old  English  the  French 
niais  and  nice,  from  similarity  of  form  and  analogy 
of  meaning,  naturally  fused  together  in  the  word 
nice,  which,  by  an  unusual  luck,  has  been  promoted 
from  a  derogatory  to  a  respectful  sense.  Gas- 
coigne's  lispe  might  have  put  Mr.  Hazlitt  on  his 
guard,  if  he  ever  considered  the  sense  of  what  he 
quotes.  But  he  never  does,  nor  of  what  he  edits 
either.  For  example,  in  the  "  Smyth  and  his 
Dame  "  we  find  the  following  note  :  "  Prowe,  or 
proffe,  is  not  at  all  uncommon  as  a  form  of  profit. 
In  the  *  Seven  Names  of  a  Prison,'  a  poem  printed 
in  ReliquicB  Antiquce,  we  have,  — 

'  Quintum  nomen  istins  foveae  ita  probatnm, 
A  place  oiproffioT  man  to  know  bothe  frend  and  foo.' " 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  345 

Now  proff  and  prow  are  radically  different  words. 
Proff  here  means  proof,  and  if  Mr.  Hazlitt  had 
read  the  stanza  which  he  quotes,  he  would  have 
found  (as  in  all  the  others  of  the  same  poem)  the 
meaning  repeated  in  Latin  in  the  last  line,  proba- 
cio  amicorum. 

But  we  wish  to  leave  our  readers  (if  not  Mr. 
Hazlitt)  in  good  humor,  and  accordingly  we  have 
reserved  two  of  his  notes  as  bonnes  bouches.  In 
"  Adam  Bel,"  when  the  outlaws  ask  pardon  of  the 
king, 

"  They  kneled  downe  without  lettyng 
And  each  helde  vp  his  hande." 

To  this  passage  (tolerably  plain  to  those  not  too 
familiar  with  "  our  early  literature  "  )  Mr.  Hazlitt 
appends  this  solemn  note :  "To  hold  up  the  hand 
was  formerly  a  sign  of  respect  or  concurrence,  or  a 
mode  of  taking  an  oath ;  and  thirdly  as  a  signal 
for  mercy.  In  all  these  senses  it  has  been  em- 
ployed from  the  most  ancient  times  ;  nor  is  it  yet 
out  of  practice,  as  many  savage  nations  still  testify 
their  respect  to  a  superior  by  holding  their  hand 
[either  their  hands  or  the  hand,  Mr.  Hazlitt !]  over 
their  head.  Touching  the  hat  appears  to  be  a  ves- 
tige of  the  same  custom.  In  the  present  passage 
the  three  outlaws  may  be  understood  to  kneel  on 
approaching  the  throne,  and  to  hold  up  each  a 
hand  as  a  token  that  they  desire  to  ask  the  royal 
clemency  or  favour.  In  the  lines  which  are  sub- 
joined it  [what?]  implies  a  solemn  assent  to  an 
oath: 


346  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

'  This  swore  the  duke  and  all  his  men, 
And  all  the  lordes  that  with  him  lend, 
And  tharto  to1  held  they  up  thaire  hand.'  " 

Minot's  Poems,  ed.  1825,  p.  9. 

The  admirable  Tupper  could  not  have  done  better 
than  this,  even  so  far  as  the  mere  English  of  it  is 
concerned.  Where  all  is  so  fine,  we  hesitate  to 
declare  a  preference,  but,  on  the  whole,  must  give 
in  to  the  passage  about  touching  the  hat,  which  is 
as  good  as  "  mobbled  queen."  The  Americans 
are  still  among  the  "  savage  nations  "  who  "  imply 
a  solemn  assent  to  an  oath  "  by  holding  up  the 
hand.  Mr.  Hazlitt  does  not  seem  to  know  that 
the  question  whether  to  kiss  the  book  or  hold  up 
the  hand  was  once  a  serious  one  in  English  politics. 
But  Mr.  Hazlitt  can  do  better  even  than  this ! 
Our  readers  may  be  incredulous ;  but  we  shall 
proceed  to  show  that  he  can.  In  the  "  Schole- 
House  of  Women,"  among  much  other  equally  deli- 
cate satire  of  the  other  sex,  (if  we  may  venture 
still  to  call  them  so,)  the  satirist  undertakes  to 
prove  that  woman  was  made,  not  of  the  rib  of  a 
man,  but  of  a  dog  :  — 

"  And  yet  the  rib,  as  I  suppose, 
That  God  did  take  out  of  the  man 
A  dog  vp  caught,  and  a  way  gose 
Eat  it  clene ;  so  that  as  than 
The  woork  to  finish  that  God  began 
Could  not  be,  as  we  haue  said, 
Because  the  dog  the  rib  conuaid. 

1  The  to  is,  we  need  not  say,  an  addition  of  Mr.  Hazlitt' s. 
What  faith  can  we  put  in  the  text  of  a  man  who  so  often  copies 
even  his  quotations  inaccurately  ? 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS  347 

A  remedy  God  found  as  yet ; 
Out  of  the  dog  he  took  a  rib." 

Mr.  Hazlitt  has  a  long  note  on  way  gose,  of  which 
the  first  sentence  shall  suffice  us :  "  The  origin  of 
the  term  way-goose  is  involved  in  some  obscurity." 
We  should  think  so,  to  be  sure !  Let  us  modern- 
ize the  spelling  and  grammar,  and  correct  the 
punctuation,  and  then  see  how  it  looks  :  — 

"  A  dog  up  caught  and  away  goes, 
Eats  it  up." 

We  will  ask  Mr.  Hazlitt  to  compare  the  text,  as  he 
prints  it,  with 

"  Into  the  hall  he  gose."     (Vol.  iii.  p.  67.) 

We  should  have  expected  a  note  here  on  the  "  hall 
he-goose."  Not  to  speak  of  the  point  of  the  joke, 
such  as  it  is,  a  goose  that  could  eat  up  a  man's  rib 
could  only  be  matched  by  one  that  could  swallow 
such  a  note,  —  or  write  it ! 

We  have  made  but  a  small  florilegium  from 
Mr.  Hazlitt's  remarkable  volumes.  His  editorial 
method  seems  to  have  been  to  print  as  the  Lord 
would,  till  his  eye  was  caught  by  some  word  he  did 
not  understand,  and  then  to  make  the  reader  com- 
fortable by  a  note  showing  that  the  editor  is  as 
much  in  the  dark  as  he.  We  are  profoundly  thank- 
ful for  the  omission  of  a  glossary.  It  would  have 
been  a  nursery  and  seminary  of  blunder.  To  ex- 
pose pretentious  charlatanry  is  sometimes  the  un- 
pleasant duty  of  a  reviewer.  It  is  a  duty  we  never 
seek,  and  should  not  have  assumed  in  this  case  but 
for  the  impertinence  with  which  Mr.  Hazlitt  has 


348  LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 

treated  dead  and  living  scholars,  the  latchets  of 
whose  shoes  he  is  not  worthy  to  unloose,  and  to 
express  their  gratitude  to  whom  is,  or  ought  to  be, 
a  pleasure  to  all  honest  lovers  of  their  mother- 
tongue.  If  he  who  has  most  to  learn  be  the  hap- 
piest man,  Mr.  Hazlitt  is  indeed  to  be  envied ; 
but  we  hope  he  will  learn  a  great  deal  before  he 
lays  his  prentice  hands  on  Warton's  "  History  of 
English  Poetry,"  a  classic  in  its  own  way.  If  he 
does  not  learn  before,  he  will  be  likely  to  learn 
after,  and  in  no  agreeable  fashion. 


EMERSON  THE  LECTURER 

1861-68 

IT  is  a  singular  fact,  that  Mr.  Emerson  is  the 
most  steadily  attractive  lecturer  in  America.  Into 
that  somewhat  cold-waterish  region  adventurers  of 
the  sensational  kind  come  down  now  and  then  with 
a  splash,  to  become  disregarded  King  Logs  before 
the  next  season.  But  Mr.  Emerson  always  draws. 
A  lecturer  now  for  something  like  a  third  of  a 
century,  one  of  the  pioneers  of  the  lecturing  sys- 
tem, the  charm  of  his  voice,  his  manner,  and  his 
matter  has  never  lost  its  power  over  his  earlier 
hearers,  and  continually  winds  new  ones  in  its  en- 
chanting meshes.  What  they  do  not  fully  under- 
stand they  take  on  trust,  and  listen,  saying  to 
themselves,  as  the  old  poet  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  — 

"A  sweet,  attractive,  kind  of  grace, 
A  full  assurance  given  by  looks, 
Continual  comfort  in  a  face, 

The  lineaments  of  gospel  books." 

We  call  it  a  singular  fact,  because  we  Yankees 
are  thought  to  be  fond  of  the  spread-eagle  style, 
and  nothing  can  be  more  remote  from  that  than 
his.  We  are  reckoned  a  practical  folk,  who  would 
rather  hear  about  a  new  air-tight  stove  than  about 
Plato ;  yet  our  favorite  teacher's  practicality  is  not 


350  EMERSON   THE  LECTURER 

in  the  least  of  the  Poor  Richard  variety.  If  he 
have  any  Buncombe  constituency,  it  is  that  unreal- 
ized commonwealth  of  philosophers  which  Plotinus 
proposed  to  establish ;  and  if  he  were  to  make  an 
almanac,  his  directions  to  farmers  would  be  some- 
thing like  this :  "  OCTOBER  :  Indian  Summer  ; 
now  is  the  time  to  get  in  your  early  Vedas." 
What,  then,  is  his  secret?  Is  it  not  that  he  out- 
Yankees  us  all?  that  his  range  includes  us  all? 
that  he  is  equally  at  home  with  the  potato-disease 
and  original  sin,  with  pegging  shoes  and  the  Over- 
soul?  that,  as  we  try  all  trades,  so  has  he  tried  all 
cultures  ?  and  above  all,  that  his  mysticism  gives 
us  a  counterpoise  to  our  super-practicality  ? 

There  is  no  man  living  to  whom,  as  a  writer, 
so  many  of  us  feel  and  thankfully  acknowledge 
so  great  an  indebtedness  for  ennobling  impulses, 
—  none  whom  so  many  cannot  abide.  What  does 
he  mean?  ask  these  last.  Where  is  his  system? 
What  is  the  use  of  it  all?  What  the  deuse  have 
we  to  do  with  Brahma?  I  do  not  propose  to  write 
an  essay  on  Emerson  at  this  time.  I  will  only  say 
that  one  may  find  grandeur  and  consolation  in  a 
starlit  night  without  caring  to  ask  what  it  means, 
save  grandeur  and  consolation ;  one  may  like  Mon- 
taigne, as  some  ten  generations  before  us  have 
done,  without  thinking  him  so  systematic  as  some 
more  eminently  tedious  (or  shall  we  say  tediously 
eminent?)  authors;  one  may  think  roses  as  good 
in  their  way  as  cabbages,  though  the  latter  would 
make  a  better  show  in  the  witness-box,  if  cross- 
examined  as  to  their  usef ulness :  and  as  for  Brahma, 


Emerson 


.  j5    -  -- 


EMERSON  THE  LECTURER      351 

why,  he  can  take  care  of  himself,  and  won't  bite  us 
at  any  rate. 

The  bother  with  Mr.  Emerson  is,  that,  though 
he  writes  in  prose,  he  is  essentially  a  poet.  If  you 
undertake  to  paraphrase  what  he  says,  and  to  re- 
duce it  to  words  of  one  syllable  for  infant  minds, 
you  will  make  as  sad  work  of  it  as  the  good  monk 
with  his  analysis  of  Homer  in  the  "  Epistolse  Ob- 
scurorum  Virorum."  We  look  upon  him  as  one 
of  the  few  men  of  genius  whom  our  age  has  pro- 
duced, and  there  needs  no  better  proof  of  it  than 
his  masculine  faculty  of  fecundating  other  minds. 
Search  for  his  eloquence  in  his  books  and  you  will 
perchance  miss  it,  but  meanwhile  you  will  find  that 
it  has  kindled  all  your  thoughts.  For  choice  and 
pith  of  language  he  belongs  to  a  better  age  than 
ours,  and  might  rub  shoulders  with  Fuller  and 
Browne,  —  though  he  does  use  that  abominable 
word  reliable.  His  eye  for  a  fine,  telling  phrase 
that  will  carry  true  is  like  that  of  a  backwoodsman 
for  a  rifle;  and  he  will  dredge  you  up  a  choice 
word  from  the  mud  of  Cotton  Mather  himself.  A 
diction  at  once  so  rich  and  so  homely  as  his  I 
know  not  where  to  match  in  these  days  of  writing 
by  the  page ;  it  is  like  homespun  cloth-of-gold. 
The  many  cannot  miss  his  meaning,  and  only  the 
few  can  find  it.  It  is  the  open  secret  of  all  true 
genius.  It  is  wholesome  to  angle  in  those  profound 
pools,  though  one  be  rewarded  with  nothing  more 
than  the  leap  of  a  fish  that  flashes  his  freckled  side 
in  the  sun  and  as  suddenly  absconds  in  the  dark 
and  dreamy  waters  again.  There  is  keen  excite- 


352  EMERSON  THE  LECTURER 

ment,  though  there  be  no  ponderable  acquisition. 
If  we  carry  nothing  home  in  our  baskets,  there  is 
ample  gain  in  dilated  lungs  and  stimulated  blood. 
What  does  he  mean,  quotha  ?  He  means  inspiring 
hints,  a  divining-rod  to  your  deeper  nature.  No 
doubt,  Emerson,  like  all  original  men,  has  his 
peculiar  audience,  and  yet  I  know  none  that  can 
hold  a  promiscuous  crowd  in  pleased  attention  so 
long  as  he.  As  in  all  original  men,  there  is  some- 
thing for  every  palate.  "  Would  you  know,"  says 
Goethe,  "  the  ripest  cherries  ?  Ask  the  boys  and 
the  blackbirds." 

The  announcement  that  such  a  pleasure  as  a 
new  course  of  lectures  by  him  is  coming,  to  people 
as  old  as  I  am,  is  something  like  those  forebodings 
of  spring  that  prepare  us  every  year  for  a  familiar 
novelty,  none  the  less  novel,  when  it  arrives,  be- 
cause it  is  familiar.  We  know  perfectly  well  what 
we  are  to  expect  from  Mr.  Emerson,  and  yet  what 
he  says  always  penetrates  and  stirs  us,  as  is  apt  to 
be  the  case  with  genius,  in  a  very  unlooked-for 
fashion.  Perhaps  genius  is  one  of  the  few  things 
which  we  gladly  allow  to  repeat  itself,  —  one  of  the 
few  that  multiply  rather  than  weaken  the  force  of 
their  impression  by  iteration  ?  Perhaps  some  of  us 
hear  more  than  the  mere  words,  are  moved  by 
something  deeper  than  the  thoughts  ?  If  it  be  so, 
we  are  quite  right,  for  it  is  thirty  years  and  more 
of  "  plain  living  and  high  thinking  "  that  speak  to 
us  in  this  altogether  unique  lay-preacher.  We  have 
shared  in  the  beneficence  of  this  varied  culture,  this 
fearless  impartiality  in  criticism  and  speculation, 


EMERSON  THE  LECTURER      353 

this  masculine  sincerity,  this  sweetness  of  nature 
which  rather  stimulates  than  cloys,  for  a  generation 
long.  If  ever  there  was  a  standing  testimonial  to 
the  cumulative  power  and  value  of  Character,  (and 
we  need  it  sadly  in  these  days,)  we  have  it  in  this 
gracious  and  dignified  presence.  What  an  antisep- 
tic is  a  pure  life !  At  sixty-five  (or  two  years  be- 
yond his  grand  climacteric,  as  he  would  prefer  to 
call  it)  he  has  that  privilege  of  soul  which  abolishes 
the  calendar,  and  presents  him  to  us  always  the  un- 
wasted  contemporary  of  his  own  prime.  I  do  not 
know  if  he  seem  old  to  his  younger  hearers,  but 
we  who  have  known  him  so  long  wonder  at  the 
tenacity  with  which  he  maintains  himself  even  in 
the  outposts  of  youth.  I  suppose  it  is  not  the 
Emerson  of  1868  to  whom  we  listen.  For  us  the 
whole  life  of  the  man  is  distilled  in  the  clear  drop 
of  every  sentence,  and  behind  each  word  we  divine 
the  force  of  a  noble  character,  the  weight  of  a  large 
capital  of  thinking  and  being.  We  do  not  go  to 
hear  what  Emerson  says  so  much  as  to  hear 
Emerson.  Not  that  we  perceive  any  falling-off  in 
anything  that  ever  was  essential  to  the  charm  of 
Mr.  Emerson's  peculiar  style  of  thought  or  phrase. 
The  first  lecture,  to  be  sure,  was  more  disjointed 
even  than  common.  It  was  as  if,  after  vainly  try- 
ing to  get  his  paragraphs  into  sequence  and  order, 
he  had  at  last  tried  the  desperate  expedient  of 
shuffling  them.  It  was  chaos  come  again,  but  it 
was  a  chaos  full  of  shooting-stars,  a  jumble  of 
creative  forces.  The  second  lecture,  on  "  Criticism 
and  Poetry,"  was  quite  up  to  the  level  of  old  times, 


354  EMERSON  THE   LECTURER 

full  of  that  power  of  strangely-subtle  association 
whose  indirect  approaches  startle  the  mind  into  al- 
most painful  attention,  of  those  flashes  of  mutual 
understanding  between  speaker  and  hearer  that  are 
gone  ere  one  can  say  it  lightens.  The  vice  of  Em- 
erson's criticism  seems  to  be,  that  while  no  man  is 
so  sensitive  to  what  is  poetical,  few  men  are  less 
sensible  than  he  of  what  makes  a  poem.  He  values 
the  solid  meaning  of  thought  above  the  subtler 
meaning  of  style.  He  would  prefer  Donne,  I  sus- 
pect, to  Spenser,  and  sometimes  mistakes  the  queer 
for  the  original. 

To  be  young  is  surely  the  best,  if  the  most  pre- 
carious, gift  of  life ;  yet  there  are  some  of  us  who 
would  hardly  consent  to  be  young  again,  if  it  were 
at  the  cost  of  our  recollection  of  Mr.  Emerson's 
first  lectures  during  the  consulate  of  Van  Buren. 
We  used  to  walk  in  from  the  country  to  the 
Masonic  Temple  (I  think  it  was),  through  the  crisp 
winter  night,  and  listen  to  that  thrilling  voice  of 
his,  so  charged  with  subtle  meaning  and  subtle 
music,  as  shipwrecked  men  on  a  raft  to  the  hail  of 
a  ship  that  came  with  unhoped-for  food  and  rescue. 
Cynics  might  say  what  they  liked.  Did  our  own 
imaginations  transfigure  dry  remainder-biscuit  into 
ambrosia  ?  At  any  rate,  he  brought  us  life,  which, 
on  the  whole,  is  no  bad  thing.  Was  it  all  tran- 
scendentalism ?  magic-lantern  pictures  on  mist  ?  As 
you  will.  Those,  then,  were  just  what  we  wanted. 
But  it  was  not  so.  The  delight  and  the  benefit 
were  that  he  put  us  in  communication  with  a  larger 
style  of  thought,  sharpened  our  wits  with  a  more 


EMERSON   THE  LECTURER  355 

pungent  phrase,  gave  us  ravishing  glimpses  of  an 
ideal  under  the  dry  husk  of  our  New  England; 
made  us  conscious  of  the  supreme  and  everlasting 
originality  of  whatever  bit  of  soul  might  be  in  any 
of  us ;  freed  us,  in  short,  from  the  stocks  of  prose 
in  which  we  had  sat  so  long  that  we  had  grown 
wellnigh  contented  in  our  cramps.  And  who  that 
saw  the  audience  will  ever  forget  it,  where  every 
one  still  capable  of  fire,  or  longing  to  renew  in  him- 
self the  half -forgotten  sense  of  it,  was  gathered? 
Those  faces,  young  and  old,  agleam  with  pale  in- 
tellectual light,  eager  with  pleased  attention,  flash 
upon  me  once  more  from  the  deep  recesses  of  the 
years  with  an  exquisite  pathos.  Ah,  beautiful 
young  eyes,  brimming  with  love  and  hope,  wholly 
vanished  now  in  that  other  world  we  call  the  Past, 
or  peering  doubtfully  through  the  pensive  gloam- 
ing of  memory,  your  light  impoverishes  these 
cheaper  days !  I  hear  again  that  rustle  of  sensa- 
tion, as  they  turned  to  exchange  glances  over  some 
pithier  thought,  some  keener  flash  of  that  humor 
which  always  played  about  the  horizon  of  his  mind 
like  heat-lightning,  and  it  seems  now  like  the  sad 
whisper  of  the  autumn  leaves  that  are  whirling 
around  me.  But  would  my  picture  be  complete  if 
I  forgot  that  ample  and  vegete  countenance  of 

Mr.  R of  W ,  —  how,   from  its   regular 

post  at  the  corner  of  the  front  bench,  it  turned  in 
ruddy  triumph  to  the  profaner  audience  as  if  he 
were  the  inexplicably  appointed  fugleman  of  appre- 
ciation ?  I  was  reminded  of  him  by  those  hearty 
cherubs  in  Titian's  Assumption  that  look  at  you  as 


356      EMERSON  THE  LECTURER 

who  should  say, "  Did  you  ever  see  a  Madonna  like 
that  ?  Did  you  ever  behold  one  hundred  and  fifty 
pounds  of  womanhood  mount  heavenward  before 
like  a  rocket  ?  " 

To  some  of  us  that  long-past  experience  remains 
as  the  most  marvellous  and  fruitful  we  have  ever 
had.  Emerson  awakened  us,  saved  us  from  the 
body  of  this  death.  It  is  the  sound  of  the  trumpet 
that  the  young  soul  longs  for,  careless  what  breath 
may  fill  it.  Sidney  heard  it  in  the  ballad  of 
"  Chevy  Chase,"  and  we  in  Emerson.  Nor  did  it 
blow  retreat,  but  called  to  us  with  assurance  of  vic- 
tory. Did  they  say  he  was  disconnected  ?  So  were 
the  stars,  that  seemed  larger  to  our  eyes,  still  keen 
with  that  excitement,  as  we  walked  homeward  with 
prouder  stride  over  the  creaking  snow.  And  were 
they  not  knit  together  by  a  higher  logic  than  our 
mere  sense  could  master  ?  Were  we  enthusiasts  ? 
I  hope  and  believe  we  were,  and  am  thankful  to  the 
man  who  made  us  worth  something  for  once  in  our 
lives.  If  asked  what  was  left?  what  we  carried 
home?  we  should  not  have  been  careful  for  an 
answer.  It  would  have  been  enough  if  we  had  said 
that  something  beautiful  had  passed  that  way.  Or 
we  might  have  asked  in  return  what  one  brought 
away  from  a  symphony  of  Beethoven  ?  Enough 
that  he  had  set  that  ferment  of  wholesome  discon- 
tent at  work  in  us.  There  is  one,  at  least,  of  those 
old  hearers,  so  many  of  whom  are  now  in  the  frui- 
tion of  that  intellectual  beauty  of  which  Emerson 
gave  them  both  the  desire  and  the  foretaste,  who 
will  always  love  to  repeat :  — 


EMERSON  THE  LECTURER      357 

"  Che  in  la  mente  m'&  fitta,  ed  or  m'accuora 
La  cara  e  buona  immagine  paterna 
Di  voi,  quando  nel  mondo  ad  ora  ad  ora 
M'insegnavaste  come  1'uom  s'eterna," 

I  am  unconsciously  thinking,  as  I  write,  of  the 
third  lecture  of  the  present  course,  in  which  Mr. 
Emerson  gave  some  delightful  reminiscences  of  the 
intellectual  influences  in  whose  movement  he  had 
shared.  It  was  like  hearing  Goethe  read  some  pas- 
sages of  the  "  Wahrheit  aus  seinem  Leben."  Not 
that  there  was  not  a  little  Dichtung,  too,  here  and 
there,  as  the  lecturer  built  up  so  lofty  a  pedestal 
under  certain  figures  as  to  lift  them  into  a  promi- 
nence of  obscurity,  and  seem  to  masthead  them 
there.  Everybody  was  asking  his  neighbor  who 
this  or  that  recondite  great  man  was,  in  the  faint 
hope  that  somebody  might  once  have  heard  of  him. 
There  are  those  who  call  Mr.  Emerson  cold.  Let 
them  revise  their  judgment  in  presence  of  this  loy- 
alty of  his  that  can  keep  warm  for  half  a  century, 
that  never  forgets  a  friendship,  or  fails  to  pay  even 
a  fancied  obligation  to  the  uttermost  farthing. 
This  substantiation  of  shadows  was  but  incidental, 
and  pleasantly  characteristic  of  the  man  to  those 
who  know  and  love  him.  The  greater  part  of  the 
lecture  was  devoted  to  reminiscences  of  things 
substantial  in  themselves.  He  spoke  of  Everett, 
fresh  from  Greece  and  Germany  ;  of  Channing  ; 
of  the  translations  of  Margaret  Fuller,  Ripley,  and 
Dwight ;  of  the  Dial  and  Brook  Farm.  To  what 
he  said  of  the  latter  an  undertone  of  good-humored 
irony  gave  special  zest.  But  what  every  one  of  his 


358  EMERSON   THE  LECTURER 

hearers  felt  was  that  the  protagonist  in  the  drama 
was  left  out.  The  lecturer  was  no  .ZEneas  to  bab- 
ble the  quorum  magna  pars  ful,  and,  as  one  of  his 
listeners,  I  cannot  help  wishing  to  say  how  each  of 
them  was  commenting  the  story  as  it  went  along, 
and  filling  up  the  necessary  gaps  in  it  from  his  own 
private  store  of  memories.  His  younger  hearers 
could  not  know  how  much  they  owed  to  the  benign 
impersonality,  the  quiet  scorn  of  everything  igno- 
ble, the  never-sated  hunger  of  self-culture,  that 
were  personified  in  the  man  before  them.  But  the 
older  knew  how  much  the  country's  intellectual 
emancipation  was  due  to  the"  stimulus  of  his  teach- 
ing and  example,  how  constantly  he  had  kept  burn- 
ing the  beacon  of  an  ideal  life  above  our  lower 
region  of  turmoil.  To  him  more  than  to  all  other 
causes  together  did  the  young  martyrs  of  our  civil 
war  owe  the  sustaining  strength  of  thoughtful  hero- 
ism that  is  so  touching  in  every  record  of  their 
lives.  Those  who  are  grateful  to  Mr.  Emerson,  as 
many  of  us  are,  for  what  they  feel  to  be  most  val- 
uable in  their  culture,  or  perhaps  I  should  say  their 
impulse,  are  grateful  not  so  much  for  any  direct 
teachings  of  his  as  for  that  inspiring  lift  which  only 
genius  can  give,  and  without  which  all  doctrine  is 
chaff. 

This  was  something  like  the  caret  which  some  of 
us  older  boys  wished  to  fill  up  on  the  margin  of  the 
master's  lecture.  Few  men  have  been  so  much  to 
so  many,  and  through  so  large  a  range  of  aptitudes 
and  temperaments,  and  this  simply  because  all  of 
us  value  manhood  beyond  any  or  all  other  qualities 


EMERSON   THE  LECTURER  359 

of  character.  We  may  suspect  in  him,  here  and 
there,  a  certain  thinness  and  vagueness  of  quality, 
but  let  the  waters  go  over  him  as  they  list,  this 
masculine  fibre  of  his  will  keep  its  lively  color  and 
its  toughness  of  texture.  I  have  heard  some  great 
speakers  and  some  accomplished  orators,  but  never 
any  that  so  moved  and  persuaded  men  as  he.  There 
is  a  kind  of  undertow  in  that  rich  baritone  of  his 
'that  sweeps  our  minds  from  their  foothold  into 
deeper  waters  with  a  drift  we  cannot  and  would  not 
resist.  And  how  artfully  (for  Emerson  is  a  long- 
studied  artist  in  these  things)  does  the  deliberate  ut- 
terance, that  seems  waiting  for  the  fit  word,  appear 
to  admit  us  partners  in  the  labor  of  thought  and 
make  us  feel  as  if  the  glance  of  humor  were  a  sud- 
den suggestion,  as  if  the  perfect  phrase  lying  written 
there  on  the  desk  were  as  unexpected  to  him  as  to 
us  !  In  that  closely-filed  speech  of  his  at  the  Burns 
centenary  dinner,  every  word  seemed  to  have  just 
dropped  down  to  him  from  the  clouds.  He  looked 
far  away  over  the  heads  of  his  hearers,  with  a 
vague  kind  of  expectation,  as  into  some  private 
heaven  of  invention,  and  the  winged  period  came 
at  last  obedient  to  his  spell.  "  My  dainty  Ariel !  " 
he  seemed  murmuring  to  himself  as  he  cast  down 
his  eyes  as  if  in  deprecation  of  the  frenzy  of  ap- 
proval and  caught  another  sentence  from  the  Sibyl- 
line leaves  that  lay  before  him,  ambushed  behind  a 
dish  of  fruit  and  seen  only  by  nearest  neighbors. 
Every  sentence  brought  down  the  house,  as  I  never 
saw  one  brought  down  before,  —  and  it  is  not  so 
easy  to  hit  Scotsmen  with  a  sentiment  that  has  no 


860      EMERSON  THE  LECTURER 

hint  of  native  brogue  in  it.  I  watched,  for  it  was 
an  interesting  study,  how  the  quick  sympathy  ran 
flashing  from  face  to  face  down  the  long  tables, 
like  an  electric  spark  thrilling  as  it  went,  and  then 
exploded  in  a  thunder  of  plaudits.  I  watched  till 
tables  and  faces  vanished,  for  I,  too,  found  my- 
self caught  up  in  the  common  enthusiasm,  and  my 
excited  fancy  set  me  under  the  bema  listening  to 
him  who  f ulmined  over  Greece.  I  can  never  help 
applying  to  him  what  Ben  Jonson  said  of  Bacon : 
"  There  happened  in  my  time  one  noble  speaker, 
who  was  full  of  gravity  in  his  speaking.  His  lan- 
guage was  nobly  censorious.  No  man  ever  spake 
more  neatly,  more  pressly,  more  weightily,  or  suf- 
fered less  emptiness,  less  idleness,  in  what  he  ut- 
tered. No  member  of  his  speech  but  consisted  of 
his  own  graces.  His  hearers  could  not  cough,  or 
look  aside  from  him,  without  loss.  He  commanded 
where  he  spoke."  Those  who  heard  him  while 
their  natures  were  yet  plastic,  and  their  mental 
nerves  trembled  under  the  slightest  breath  of  di- 
vine air,  will  never  cease  to  feel  and  say  :  — 

"  Was  never  eye  did  see  that  face, 

Was  never  ear  did  hear  that  tongue, 
Was  never  mind  did  mind  his  grace, 

That  ever  thought  the  travail  long ; 
But  eyes,  and  ears,  and  every  thought, 
Were  with  his  sweet  perfections  caught. " 


THOKEAU 

1865 

WHAT  contemporary,  if  he  was  in  the  fighting 
period  of  his  life,  (since  Nature  sets  limits  about 
her  conscription  for  spiritual  fields,  as  the  state 
does  in  physical__warfare,)  will  ever  forget  what 
was  somewha^vaguel^alled  the  "  Transcendental 
Movement  "  of  thirty  years  ago  ?  Apparently  set 
astir  by  Carlyle's  essays  on  the  "  Signs  of  the 
Times,"  and  on  "  History,"  the  final  and  more  im- 
mediate impulse  seemed  to  be  given  by  "  Sartor 
Resartus."  At  least  the  republication  in  Boston 
of  that  wonderful  Abraham  a  Sancta  Clara  sermon 
on  Lear's  text  of  the  miserable  forked  radish  gave 
the  signal  for  a  sudden  mental  and  moral  mutiny. 
Ecce  nunc  tempus  acceptable  !  was  shouted  on  all 
hands  with  every  variety  of  emphasis,  and  by 
voices  of  every  conceivable  pitch,  representing  the 
three  sexes  of  men,  women,  and  Lady  Mary  Wort- 
ley  Montagues.  The  nameless  eagle  of  the  tree 
Ygdrasil  was  about  to  sit  at  last,  and  wild-eyed  en- 
thusiasts rushed  from  all  sides,  each  eager  to  thrust 
under  the  mystic  bird  that  chalk  egg  from  which 
the  new  and  fairer  Creation  was  to  be  hatched  in 
due  time.  JRedeunt  Saturnia  regna,  —  so  far  was 
certain,  though  in  what  shape,  or  by  what  meth- 


362  THOREA  U 

ods,  was  still  a  matter  of  debate.  Every  possible 
form  of  intellectual  and  physical  dyspepsia  brought 
forth  its  gospel^  Bran  had  its  prophets,  and  the 
presartorial  simplicity  of  Adam  its  martyrs,  tailored 
impromptu  from  the  tar-pot  by  incensed  neighbors, 
and  sent  forth  to  illustrate  the  "  feathered  Mer- 
cury," as  defined  by  Webster  and  Worcester. 
Plainness  of  speech  was  carried  to  a  pitch  that 
would  have  taken  away  the  breath  of  George  Fox ; 
and  even  swearing  had  its  evangelists,  who  an- 
swered a  simple  inquiry  after  their  health  with  an 
elaborate  ingenuity  of  imprecation  that  might  have 
been  honorably  mentioned  by  Marl  borough  in  gen- 
eral orders.  Everybody  had  a  mission  (with  a  cap- 
ital  M)  to  attend  to  every  body-else's  business.  .No 
T)rain  but  had  its  private  maggot,  which  must  have 
found  pitiabTy  short  commons  sometimes^ Not  a 
few  impecunious  zealots  abjured  the  use  of  money 
(unless  earned  by  other  people),  professing  to 
live  on  the  internal  revenues  of  the  spirit.  Some 
had  an  assurance  of  instant  millennium  so  soon  as 
hooks  and  eyes  should  be  substituted  for  buttons. 
Communities  were  established  where  everything 
was  to  be  common  but  common-sense.  Men  re- 
nounced their  old  gods,  and  hesitated  only  whether 
to  bestow  their  furloughed  allegiance  on  Thor  or 
Budh.  Conventions  were  held  for  every  hitherto 
inconceivable  purpose.  The  belated  gift  of  tongues, 
as  among  the  Fifth  Monarchy  men,  spread  like  a 
contagion,  rendering  its  victims  incomprehensible 
to  all  Christian  men ;  whether  equally  so  to  the 
most  distant  possible  heathen  or  not  was  unexperi- 


THOREA  U  363 

mented,  though  many  would  have  subscribed  liber- 
ally that  a  fair  trial  might  be  made.  It  was  the 
pentecost  of  Shinar.  The  clay  of  utterances  repro- 
duced the  day  of  rebuses  and  anagrams,  and  there 
was  nothing  so  simple  that  uncial  letters  and  the 
style  of  Diphilus  the  Labyrinth  could  not  turn  it 
into  a  riddle.  Many  foreign  revolutionists  out  of 
work  added  to  the  general  misunderstanding  their 
contribution  of  broken  English  in  every  most  in- 
genious form  of  fracture.  All  stood  ready  at  a 
moment's  notice  to  reform  everything  but  them- 
selves. The  general  motto  was  :  — 

"  And  we  '11  talk  with  them,  too, 
And  take  upon  's  the  mystery  of  things 
As  if  we  were  God's  spies." 

Nature  is  always  kind  enough  to  give  even  her 
clouds  a  humorous  lining.  I  have  barely  hinted 
at  the  comic  side  of  the  affair,  for  the  material  was 
endless.  This  was  the  whistle  and  trailing  fuse 
of  the  shell,  biitjjifirft  was  a  vpry  solid  and  serious 
kernel,  full  of  the  most  deadly  explosiveness. 
Thoughtful  men  divined  it,  but  the  generality  sus- 
pected nothing.  The  word  "  transcendental  "  then 
was  the  maid  of  all  work  for  those  who  could  not 
think,  as  "  Pre-Raphaelite  "  has  been  more  recently 
for  people  of  the  same  limited  housekeeping.  The 
truth  is,  that  there  was  a  much  nearer  metaphysi- 
cal relation  and  a  much  more  distant  aesthetic  and 
literary  relation  between  Carlyle  and  the  Apostles 
of  the  Newness,  as  they  were  called  in  New  Eng- 
land, than  has  commonly  been  supposed.  Both 
represented  the  reaction  and  revolt  against  Philis- 


364  THOREA  U 

terei,  a  renewal  of  the  old  battle  begun  in  modern 
times  by  Erasmus  and  Reuchlin,  and  continued 
by  Lessing,  Goethe,  and,  in  a  far  narrower  sense, 
by  Heine  in  Germany,  and  of  which  Fielding, 
Sterne,  and  Wordsworth  in  different  ways  have 
been  the  leaders  in  England.  It  was  simply  a  strug- 
gle for  fresh  air,  in  which,  if  the  windows  could  not 
be  opened,  there  was  danger  that  panes  would  be 
broken,  though  painted  with  images  of  saints  and 
martyrs.  Light,  colored  by  these  reverend  effigies, 
was  none  the  more  respirable  for  being  picturesque. 
Thereis  only  ""ft  thing  footer  thnn  tradition,  and 
that  is  the  original  and  eternal  life  out  of  which  all 
tradition  takes  its  rise.  It  was  this  life  which  the 
reformers  demanded,  with  more  or  less  clearness  of 
consciousness  and  expression,  life  in  politics,  life  in 
literature,  life  in  religion.  Of  what  use  to  import 
a  gospel  from  Judaea,  if  we  leave  behind  the  soul 
that  made  it  possible,  the  God  who  keeps  it  forever 
real  and  present  ?  Surely  Abana  and  Pharpar  are 
better  than  Jordan,  if  a  living  faith  be  mixed  with 
those  waters  and  none  with  these. 

Scotch  Presbyterianism  as  a  motive  of  spiritual 
progress  was  dead ;  New  England  Puritanism  was 
in  like  manner  dead ;  in  other  words,  Protestant- 
ism had  made  its  fortune  and  no  longer  protested ; 
but  till  Carlyle  spoke  out  in  the  Old  World  and 
Emerson  in  the  New,  no  one  had  dared  to  pro- 
claim, Le  roi  est  mort :  vive  le  roi  !  The  meaning 
of  which  proclamation  was  essentially  this :  the  vital 
spirit  has  long  since  departed  out  of  this  form 
once  so  kingly,  and  the  great  seal  has  been  in  com- 


THOREA  U  365 

mission  long  enough;  but  meanwhile  the  soul  of 
man,  from  which  all  power  emanates  and  to  which 
it  reverts,  still  survives  in  undiminished  royalty; 
God  still  survives,  little  as  you  gentlemen  of  the 
Commission  seem  to  be  aware  of  it,  —  nay,  will 
possibly  outlive  the  whole  of  you,  incredible  as  it 
may  appear.  The  truth  is,  that  both  Scotch  Pres- 
byterianism  and  New  England  Puritanism  made 
their  new  avatar  in  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  the  her- 
alds of  their  formal  decease,  and  the  tendency  of 
the  one  toward  Authority  and  of  the  other  toward 
Independency  might  have  been  prophesied  by  who- 
ever had  studied  history.  The  necessity  was  not 
so  much  in  the  men  as  in  the  principles  they  rep- 
resented and  the  traditions  which  overruled  them. 
The  Puritanism  of  the  past  found  its  unwilling 
poet  in  'vjlawthorne,  the  rarest  creative  imagina- 
tion of  the  centiiry,  the  rarest  in  some  ideal  re- 
spects since  Shakespeare  ;  but  the  Puritanism  that 
cannot  die,  the  Puritanism  that  made  New  Eng- 
land what  it  is,  and  is  destined  to  make  America 
what  it  should  be,  found  its  voice  in  Emerson. 
Though  holding  himself  aloof  from  all  active  part- 
nership in  movements  of  reform,  he  has  been  the 
sleeping  partner  who  has  supplied  a  great  part  of 
their  capital. 

The  artistic  range  of  Emerson  is  narrow,  as 
every  well-read  critic  must  feel  at  once ;  and  so  is 
that  of  ^Eschylus,  so  is  that  of  Dante,  so  is  that 
of  Montaigne,  so  is  that  of  Schiller,  so  is  that  of 
nearly  every  one  except  Shakespeare;  but  there 
is  a  gauge  of  height  no  less  than  of  breadth,  of 


366  THOREA  U 

individuality  as  well  as  of  comprehensiveness,  and, 
above  all,  there  is  the  standard  of  genetic  power, 
the  test  of  the  masculine  as  distinguished  from 
the  receptive  minds.  '  There  are  staminate  plants , 
in  literature,  that  make  no  fine  show  of  fruit,  but 
without  whose  pollen,  quintessence  of  fructifying 
gold,  the  garden  had  been  barren.  Emerson's 
mind  is  emphatically  one  of  these,  and  there  is 
no  man  to  whom  our  aesthetic  culture  owes  so 
much.  The  Puritan  revolt  had  made  us  ecclesi- 
astically and  the  Revolution  politically  indepen- 
dent, but  we  were  still  socially  and  intellectually 
moored  to  English  thought,  till  Emerson  cut  the 
cable  and  gave  us  a  chance  at  the  dangers  and 
the  glories  of  blue  water.  No  man  young  enough 
to  have  felt  it  can  forget  or  cease  to  be  grate- 
ful for  the  mental  and  moral  nudge  which  he 
received  from  the  writings  of  his  high-minded  and 
brave-spirited  countryman.  That  we  agree  with 
him,  or  that  he  always  agrees  with  himself,  is 
aside  from  the  question ;  but  that  he  arouses  in 
us  something  that  we  are  the  better  for  having 
awakened,  whether  that  something  be  of  opposi- 
tion or  assent,  that  he  speaks  always  to  what  is 
highest  and  least  selfish  in  us,  few  Americans  of 
the  generation  younger  than  his  own  would  be 
disposed  to  deny.  His  oration  before  the  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  Society  at  Cambridge,  some  thirty 
years  ago,  was  an  event  without  any  former  par- 
allel in  our  literary  annals,  a  scene  to  be  always 
treasured  in  the  memory  for  its  picturesqueness 
and  its  inspiration.  What  crowded  and  breathless 


THOREAU  367 

aisles,  what  windows  clustering  with  eager  heads, 
what  enthusiasm  of  approval,  what  grim  silence 
of  foregone  dissent !  It  was  our  Yankee  version 
of  a  lecture  by  Abelard,  our  Harvard  parallel  to 
the  last  public  appearances  of  Schelling. 

^1  said  that  the  Transcendental  Movement  was  ) 
the  protestant  spirit  of  Puritanism  seeking  a  new 
outlet  and  an  escape  from  forms  and  creeds  which 
compressed  rather  than  expressed  it.  In  its  mo-) 
tives,  its  preaching,  and  its  results,  it  differed  rad- 
ically from  the  doctrine  of  Carlyle.  The  Scotch- 
man, with  all  his  genius,  and  his  humor  gigan- 
tesque  as  that  of  Rabelais,  has  grown  shriller  and 
shriller  with  years,  degenerating  sometimes  into  a 
common  scold,  and  emptying  very  unsavory  vials 
of  wrath  on  the  head  of  the  sturdy  British  Soc- 
rates of  worldly  common-sense.  The  teaching  of 
Emerson  tended  much  more  exclusively  to  self- 
culture  and  the  independent  development  of  the 
individual  man.  It  seemed  to  many  almost  Py- 
thagorean  in  its  voluntary  seclusion  from  common- 
wealth affairs.  Both  Carlyle  and  Emerson  were 
disciples  of  Goethe,  but  Emerson  in  a  far  truer 
sense ;  and  while  the  one,  from  his  bias  toward 
the  eccentric,  has  degenerated  more  and  more  into 
mannerism,  the  other  has  clarified  steadily  toward 
perfection  of  style,  —  exquisite  fineness  of  mate- 
rial, unobtrusive  lowness  of  tone  and  simplicity 
of  fashion,  the  most  high-bred  garb  of  expression. 
Whatever  may  be  said  of  his  thought,  nothing 
can  be  finer  than  the  delicious  limpidness  of  his 
phrase.  If  it  was  ever  questionable  whether  de- 


368  THOREA  U 

mocracy  could  develop  a  gentleman,  the  problem 
has  been  affirmatively  solved  at  last.  Carlyle,  in 
his  cynicism  and  his  admiration  of  force  in  and 
for  itself,  has  become  at  last  positively  inhuman ; 
Emerson,  reverencing  strength,  seeking  the  highest 
outcome  of  the  individual,  has  found  that  society 
and  politics  are  also  main  elements  in  the  attain- 
ment of  the  desired  end,  and  has  drawn  steadily 
manward  and  worldward.  The  two  men  represent 
respectively  those  grand  personifications  in  the 
drama  of  ^Eschylus,  Bux  and  Kparos. 

Among  the  pistillate  plants  kindled  to  fruitage 
by  the  Emersonian  pollen,  Thoreau  is  thus  far 
the  most  remarkable ;  and  it  is  something  emi- 
nently fitting  that  his  posthumous  works  should 
be  offered  us  vby  „  Emerson,  for  they  are  straw- 
berries from  his  own  garden.  A  singular  mix- 
ture of  varieties,  indeed,  there  is ;  —  alpine,  some 
of  them,  with  the  flavor  of  rare  mountain  air ; 
others  wood,  tasting  of  sunny  roadside  banks  or 
shy  openings  in  the  forest;  and  not  a  few  seed- 
lings swollen  hugely  by  culture,  but  lacking  the 
fine  natural  aroma  of  the  more  modest  kinds. 
Strange  books  these  are  of  his,  and  interesting 
in  many  ways,  —  instructive  chiefly  as  showing 
how  considerable  a  crop  may  be  raised  on  a  com- 
paratively narrow  close  of  mind,  and  how  much 
a  man  may  make  of  his  life  if  he  will  assiduously 
follow  it,  though  perhaps  never  truly  finding  it 
at  last. 

I  have  just  been  renewing  my  recollection  of 
Mr.  Thoreau's  writings,  and  have  read  through  his 


THOREA  U  369 

six  volumes  in  the  order  of  their  production.  I 
shall  try  to  give  an  adequate  report  of  their  impres- 
sion upon  me  both  as  critic  and  as  mere  reader. 
He  seems  to  me  to  have  been  a  man  with  so  high 
a  conceit  of  himself  that  he  accepted  without  ques- 
tioning, and  insisted  on  our  acceptingT^his  defects 
and  weaknesses  of  character  as  virtues  and  powers 
peculiar  to  himself.  Was  he  indolent,  he  finds 
none  of  the  activities  which  attract  or  employ 
the  rest  of  mankind  worthy  of  him.  Was  he 
wanting  in  the  qualities  that  make  success,  it  is 
success  that  is  contemptible,  and  not  himself  that 
lacks  persistency  and  purpose.  Was  he  poor, 
money  was  an  unmixed  evil.  Did  his  life  seem  a 
selfish  one,  he  condemns  doing  good  as  one  of  the 
weakest  of  superstitions.  To  be  of  use  was  with 
him  the  most  killing  bait  of  the  wily  tempter  Use- 
lessness.  He  had  no  faculty  of  generalization  from 
outside  of  himself,  or  at  least  no  experience  which 
would  supply  the  material  of  such,  arid,  he  makes 
his  own  whim  the  law,  his  own  range  the  hori- 
zon of  the  universe.  He  condemns  a  world,  the 
hollo  wness  of  whose  satisfactions  he  had  never 
had  the  means  of  testing,  and  we  recognize  Ape- 
mantus  behind  the  mask  of  Timon.  _He  had  little 
active  imagination  ;  of  the  receptive  he  had  much. 
His  appreciation  is  of  the  highest  quality ;  his  crit- 
ical power,  from  want  of  continuity  of  mind,  very 
limited  and  inadequate.  He  somewhere  cites  a 
simile  from  Ossian,  as  an  example  of  the  superi- 
ority of  the  old  poetry  to  the  new,  though,  even 
were  the  historic  evidence  less  convincing,  the  sen- 


ter 
tro 


370  THOREAU 

timental  melancholy  of  those  poems  should  be  con- 
clusive of  their  inodernness.  He  had  none  of  the 
artistic  mastery  which  controls  a  great  work  to 
the  serene  balance  of  completeness,  but  exquisite 
mechanical  skill  in  the  shaping  of  sentences  and 
paragraphs,  or  (more  rarely)  short  bits  of  verse 
for  the  expression  of  a  detached  thought,  senti- 
ment, or  image.  His  works  give  one  the  feeling  of 
a  sky  full  of  stars,  —  something  impressive  and 
exhilarating  certainly,  something  high  overhead 
and  freckled  thickly  with  spots  of  isolated  bright- 
ness ;  but  whether  these  have  any  mutual  rela- 
tion with  each  other,  or  have  any  concern  with 
our  mundane  matters,  is  for  the  most  part  mat- 
ter of  conjecture,  —  astrology  as  yet,  and  not  as- 

nomy. 

It  is  curious,  considering  what  Thoreau  after- 
wards became,  that  he  was  not  by  nature  an  ob- 
server. He  only  saw  the  things  he  looked  for, 
and  was  less  poet  than  naturalist.  Till  he  built 
his  Walden  shanty,  he  did  not  know  that  the  hick- 
ory grew  in  Concord.  Till  he  went  to  Maine,  he 
had  never  seen  phosphorescent  wood,  a  phenomenon 
early  familiar  to  most  country  boys.  At  forty  he 
speaks  of  the  seeding  of  the  pine  as  a  new  discov- 
ery, though  one  should  have  thought  that  its  gold- 
dust  of  blowing  pollen  might  have  earlier  drawn 
his  eye.  Neitherjiis  attention  nor  his  genius  was 
of  the  spontaneous  kind.  //He  discovered  nothing. 
He  thought  everything  a  discovery  of  his  own, 
from  moonlight  to  the  planting  of  acorns  and  nuts 
by  squirrels.  This  is  a  defect  in  his  character, 


THOREAU  371 

but  one  of  his  chief  charms  as  a  writer.  JEtxecy- 
thing  grows  fresh  under  his  hand.  He  delved  in 
his  mind  and  nature  ;  he  planted  them  with  all 
manner  of  native  and  foreign  seeds,  and  reaped 
assiduously.  He  was  not  merely  solitary,  he  would 
be  isolated,  and  succeeded  at  last  in  almost  per- 
suading himself  that  he  was  autochthonous.  He 
valued  everything  in  proportion  as  he  fancied  it  to 
be  exclusively  his  own.  He  complains  in  "  Walden  " 
that  there  is  no  one  in  Concord  with  whom  he  could 
talk  of  Oriental  literature,  though  the  man  was 
living  within  two  miles  of  his  hut  who  iatlintro- 
duced  him  to  it.  This  intellectual  selfishness^be- 
comes  sometimes  almostTpainful  in  reading  him. 
He  lacked  that  generosity  otJ  "  communication"* 
which  Johnson  admired  in  Burke.  De  Quincey 
tells  us  that  Wordsworth  was  impatient  when  any 
one  else  spoke  of  mountains,  as  if  he  had  a  pecu- 
liar property  in  them.  And  we  can  readily  under- 
stand why  it  should  be  so :  no  one  is  satisfied  with 
another's  appreciation  of  his  mistress.  But  Tho- 
reau  seems  to  have  prized  a  lofty  way  of  thinking 
(often  we  should  be  inclined  to  call  it  a  remote 
one)  not  so  much  because  it  was  good  in  itseL 
because  he  wished  few  to  share  it  with  him. 
seems  now  and  then  as  if  he  did  not  seek  to  lure 
others  up  "  above  our  lower  region  of  turmoil," 
but  to  leave  his  own  name  cut  on  the  mountain 
peak  as  the  first  climber.  This  itch  of  originality 
infects  his  thought  and  style.  To  be  misty  is  not 
to  be  mystic.  He  turns  commonplaces  end  for 
end,  and  fancies  it  makes  something  new  of  them. 


372  THOREAU 

As  we  walk  down  Park  Street,  our  eye  is  caught 
by  Dr.  Winship's  dumb-bells,  one  of  which  bears 
an  inscription  testifying  that  it  is  the  heaviest  ever 
put  up  at  arm's  length  by  any  athlete  ;  and  in  read-^ 
ingJVIr.jrhoreau's  books  we  cannot  help  feeling  as 
i?  heaometimes  invited  *>nr  attention  fa  a  partic- 
ular sophism  or  parodox  as  the  biggest  yet  main- 
tained  by  any  single  writer.  He  seeks,  at  all  risks, 
for  perversity  of  thought,  and  revives  the  age  of 
concetti  while  he  fancies  himself  going  back  to  a 
pre-classical  nature.  "A  day,"  he  says,  "passed 
in  the  society  of  those  Greek  sages,  such  as  de- 
scribed in  the  Banquet  of  Xenophon,  would  not  be 
comparable  with  the  dry  wit  of  decayed  cranberry- 
vines  and  the  fresh  Attic  salt  of  the  moss-beds." 
It  is  not  so  much  the  True  that  he  loves  as  the 
Out-of-the-Way.  As  the  Brazen  Age  shows  itself 
in  other  men  by  exaggeration  of  phrase,  so  in  him 
by  extravagance  of  statement.  He  wishes  always 
to  trump  your  suit  and^  to  ruff  when  you  least  ex^ 
peet  it.  Do  you  love  Nature  because  she  is  beau- 
tiful ?  He  will  find  a  better  argument  in  her  ugli- 
ness. Are  you  tired  of  the  artificial  man  ?  1  le 
instantly  dresses  you  up  an  ideal  in  a  Penobscot 
liulian.  ami  attributes  to  this  creature  of  his  other- 
wise-mindeduess  as  peculiarities  things  that  are 
common  to  all  woodsmen*  white  or  red.  and  this 
simply  because  he  has  not  qfaidioil  dip,  judg-fagd 
variety. 

This  notion  of  an  absolute  originality,  as  if  one 
could  have  a  patent-right  in  it,  is  an  absurdity.  A 
man  cannot  escape  in  thought,  any  more  than  he 


THOREA  U  373 

can  in  language,  from  the  past  and  the  present. 
As  no  one  ever  invents  a  word,  and  yet  language 
somehow  grows  by  general  contribution  and  neces- 
sity, so  it  is  with  thought.  Mr.  Thoreau  seems  to 
me  to  insist  in  public  on  going  back  to  flint  and 
steel,  when  there  is  a  match-box  in  his  pocket 
which  he  knows  very  well  how  to  use  at  a  pinch. 
Originality  consists  in  power  of  digesting  and  as- 
similating thought,  so  that  they  become  part  of 
our  life  and  substance.  Montaigne,  for  example, 
is  one  of  the  most  original  of  authors,  though  he 
helped  himself  to  ideas  in  every  direction.  But 
they  turn  to  blood  and  coloring  in  his  style,  and 
give  a  freshness  of  complexion  that  is  forever 
charming.  In  Thoreau  much  seems  yet  to  be  for- 
eign and  unassimilated,  showing  itself  in  symptoms 
of  indigestion.  A  preacher-up  of  Nature,  we  now 
and  then  detect  under  the  surly  and  stoic  garb 
something  of  the  sophist  and  the  sentimentalizer. 
I  am  far  from  implying  that  this  was  conscious 
on  his  part.  But  it  is  much  easier  for  a  man  to 
impose  on  himself  when  he  measures  only  with 
himself.  A  greater  familiarity  with  ordinary  men 

Would   have   don^   Thnrfta.n    g™^    hy 


how  manjr  finsLgnftlitifta  a™  jwnunonto  the  race. 
The  radical  vice  of  his  theory  of  HfiTwias  that  he 
confounded  physical  with  spiritual  remoteness 
from  men.  A  man  is  far  enough  withdrawn  from 
his  fellows  if  he  keep  himself  clear  of  their  weak- 
nesses. He  is  not  so  truly  withdrawn  as  ex- 
iled, if  he  refuse  to  share  in  their  strength.  "  Soli- 
tude," says  Cowley,  "can  be  well  fitted  and  set 


374  THOREA  U 

right  but  upon  a  very  few  persons.  They  must 
have  enough  knowledge  of  the  world  to  see  the 
vanity  of  it,  and  enough  virtue  to  despise  all  van- 
ity." It  is  a  morbid  self-consciousness  that  pro- 
nounces the  world  of  men  empty  ami  worthless  be- 
fore trying  it,  the  instinctive  evasion  of  one  who 
is  sensible  of  some  innate  weakness,  and  retorts 
the  accusation  of  it  before  any  has  made  it  but 
himself.  To  a  healthy  mind,  the  world  is  a  con- 
stant challenge  of  opportunity.  Mr.  Thoreau  had 
not  a  healthy  mind,  or  he  would  not  have  been  so 
fond  of  prescribing.  His  whole  life  was  a  search 
for  the  doctor.  The  old  mystics  had  a  wiser  sense 
of  what  the  world  was  worth.  They  ordained  a 
severe  apprenticeship  to  law,  and  even  ceremonial, 
in  order  to  the  gaining  of  freedom  and  mastery 
over  these.  Seven  years  of  service  for  Rachel  were 
to  be  rewarded  at  last  with  Leah.  Seven  other 
years  of  faithfulness  with  her  were  to  win  them  at 
last  the  true  bride  of  their  souls.  Active  Life  was 
with  them  the  only  path  to  the  Contemplative. 
V  <Thoreau  had  no  humor^nd  this  implies  that  he 
was  a  sorry  logician.  Himself  an  artist  in  rheto- 
ric, he  confounds  thought  with  style  when  he  un- 
dertakes to  speak  of  the  latter.  He  was  forever 
talking  of  getting  away  from  the  world,  but  he 
must  be  always  near  enough  to  it,  nay,  to  the  Con- 
cord corner  of  it,  to  feel  the  impression  he  makes 
there.  He  verifies  the  shrewd  remark  of  Sainte- 
Beuve,  "  On  touche  encore  a  son  temps  et  tres-fort, 
meme  quand  on  le  repousse."  This  egotism  of  his 
is  a  Stylites  pillar  after  all,  a  seclusion  which  keeps 


THOREA  U  375 

him  in  the  public  eye.  The  dignity  of  man  is  an 
excellent  thing,  but  therefore  to  hold  one's  self  too 
sacred  and  precious  is  the  reverse  of  excellent. 
There  is  something  delightfully  absurd  in  six  vol- 
umes addressed  to  a  world  of  such  "vulgar  fel- 
lows" as  Thoreau  affirmed  his  fellowmen  to  be. 
I  once  had  a  glimpse  of  a  genuine  solitary  who 
spent  his  winters  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  be- 
yond all  human  communication,  and  there  dwelt 
with  his  rifle  as  his  only  confidant.  Compared 
with  this,  the  shanty  on  Walden  Pond  has  some- 
thing the  air,  it  must  be  confessed,  of  the  Hermi- 
tage of  La  Chevrette.  I  do  not  believe  that  the 
way  to  a  true  cosmopolitanism  carries  one  into  the 
woods  or  the  society  of  musquashes.  ^Perhaps  the 
narrowest  provincialism  is  that  of  Self ;  that  of 
Kleinwinkel  is  nothing  to  it.  The  natural  man, 
like  the  singing  birds,  comes  out  of  the  forest  as 
inevitably  as  the  natural  bear  and  the  wildcat 
stick  there.  JTo  seek  to  be  natural  implies  a  con- 
sciousness that  forbids  all  naturalness  forever.  It 
is  as  easy  —  and  no  easier  —  to  be  natural  in  a 
salon  as  in  a  swamp,  if  one  do  not  aim  at  it,  for 
what  we  call  unnaturalness  always  has  its  spring 
in  a  man's  thinking  too  much  about  himself.  "  It 
is  impossible,"  said  Turgot,  "for  a  vulgar  man  to 
be  simple." 

I  look  upon  a  great  deal  of  the  modern  senti- 
mentalism  about  Nature  as  a  mark  of  disease.  It 
is  one  more  symptom  of  the  general  liver-complaint. 
To  a  man  of  wholesome  constitution  the  wilderness 
is  well  enough  for  a  mood  or  a  vacation,  but  not 


376  THOREA  U 

for  a  habit  of  life.  Those  who  have  most  loudly 
advertised  their  passion  for  seclusion  and  their 
intimacy  with  nature,  from  Petrarch  down,  have 
been  mostly  sentimentalists,  unreal  men,  misan- 
thropes on  the  spindle  side,  solacing  an  uneasy  sus- 
picion of  themselves  by  professing  contempt  for 
their  kind.  They  make  demands  on  the  world  in 
advance  proportioned  to  their  inward  measure  of 
their  own  merit,  and  are  angry  that  the  world  pays 
only  by  the  visible  measure  of  performance.  It  is 
true  of  Rousseau,  the  modern  founder  of  the  sect, 
true  of  Saint  Pierre,  his  intellectual  child,  and  of 
Chateaubriand,  his  grandchild,  the  inventor,  we 
might  almost  say,  of  the  primitive  forest,  and  who 
first  was  touched  by  the  solemn  falling  of  a  tree 
from  natural  decay  in  the  windless  silence  of  the 
woods.  It  is  a  very  shallow  view  that  affirms  trees 
and  rocks  to  be  healthy,  and  cannot  see  that  men 
in  communities  are  just  as  true  to  the  laws  of  their 
organization  and  destiny;  that  can  tolerate  the 
puffin  and  the  fox,  but  not  the  fool  and  the  knave ; 
that  would  shun  politics  because  of  its  dema- 
gogues, and  snuff  up  the  stench  of  the  obscene  fun- 
gus. The  divine  life  of  Nature  is  more  wonderful, 
more  various,  more  sublime  in  man  than  in  any 
other  of  her  works,  and  the  wisdom  that  is  gained 
by  commerce  with  men,  as  Montaigne  and  Shake- 
speare gained  it,  or  with  one's  own  soul  among  men, 
as  Dante,  is  the  most  delightful,  as  it  is  the  most 
precious,  of  all.  In  outward  nature  it  is  still  man 
that  interests  us,  and  we  care  far  less  for  the  things 
seen  than  the  way  in  which  they  are  seen  by  poetic 


THOREA  U  377 

eyes  like  "Wordsworth's  or  Thoreau's,  and  the  re- 
flections they  cast  there.  To  hear  the  to-do  that 
is  often  made  over  the  simple  fact  that  a  man  sees 
the  image  of  himself  in  the  outward  world,  one  is 
reminded  of  a  savage  when  he  for  the  first  time 
catches  a  glimpse  of  himself  in  a  looking-glass. 
"Venerable  child  of  Nature,"  we  are  tempted  to 
say,  "to  whose  science  in  the  invention  of  the 
tobacco-pipe,  to  whose  art  in  the  tattooing  of  thine 
undegenerate  hide  not  yet  enslaved  by  tailors,  we 
are  slowly  striving  to  climb  back,  the  miracle  thou 
beholdest  is  sold  in  my  unhappy  country  for  a 
shilling ! "  If  matters  go  on  as  they  have  done, 
and  everybody  must  needs  blab  of  all  the  favors 
that  have  been  done  him  by  roadside  and  river- 
brink  and  woodland  walk,  as  if  to  kiss  and  tell 
were  no  longer  treachery,  it  will  be  a  positive  re- 
freshment to  meet  a  man  who  is  as  superbly  indif- 
ferent to  Nature  as  she  is  to  him.  By  and  by  we 
shall  have  John  Smith,  of  No.  -12  -12th  Street, 
advertising  that  he  is  not  the  J.  S.  who  saw  a  cow- 
lily  on  Thursday  last,  as  he  never  saw  one  in  his 
life,  would  not  see  one  if  he  could,  and  is  prepared 
to  prove  an  alibi  on  the  day  in  question. 

Solitary  communion  with  Nature  does  not  seem 
to  have  been  sanitary  or  sweetening  in  its  influence 
on  Thoreau's  character.  On  the  contrary,  his  let- 
ters show  him  more  cynical  as  he  grew  older. 
While  he  studied  with  respectful  attention  the 
minks  and  woodchucks,  his  neighbors,  he  looked 
with  utter  contempt  on  the  august  drama  of  destiny 
of  which  his  country  was  the  scene,  and  on  which 


378  THOREA  U 

the  curtain  had  already  risen.  He  was  converting 
us  back  to  a  state  of  nature  "  so  eloquently,"  as 
Voltaire  said  of  Rousseau,  "  that  he  almost  per- 
suaded us  to  go  on  all  fours,"  while  the  wiser  fates 
were  making  it  possible  for  us  to  walk  erect  for  the 
first  time.  Had  he  conversed  more  with  his  fel- 
lows, his  sympathies  would  have  widened  with_the 
assurance  that  his  peculiar  genius  had  more  appre- 
ciation, and  his  writings  a  larger  circle  of  readers, 
or  at  least  a  warmer  one,  than  he  dreamed  of. 
We  have  the  highest  testimony1  to  the  natural 
sweetness,  sincerity,  and  nobleness  of  his  temper, 
and  in  his  books  an  equally  irrefragable  one  to  the 
rare  quality  of  his  mind.  [Ho  was  not  a  strong 
^thinker,  but  a  sensitive  feeler.  Yet  his  mind 
strikes  us  as  cold  and  wintry  in  its  purity.  A  light 
snow  has  fallen  everywhere  in  which  he  seems  to 
come  on  the  track  of  the  shier  sensations  that 
would  elsewhere  leave  no  trace.  We  think  greater 
compression  would  have  done  more  for  his  fame. 
A  feeling  of  sameness  comes  over  us  as  we  read  so 
much.  Trifles  are  recorded  with  an  over-minute 
punctuality  and  conscientiousness  of  detail.  He 
registers  the  state  of  his  personal  thermometer  thir- 
teen times  a  day.  We  cannot  help  thinking  some- 
times of  the  man  who 

"  Watches,  starves,  freezes,  and  sweats 
To  learn  but  catechisms  and  alphabets 
Of  unconcerning  things,  matters  of  fact," 

and  sometimes  of  the  saying  of  the  Persian  poet, 

1  Mr.  Emerson,  in  the  Biographical   Sketch  prefixed  to  the 
Excursions, 


THOREA  U  379 

that  "when  the  owl  would  boast,  he  boasts  of 
catching  mice  at  the  edge  of  a  hole."  We  could 
readily  part  with  some  of  his  affectations.  It  was 
well  enough  for  Pythagoras  to  say,  once  for  all, 
"  When  I  was  Euphorbus  at  the  siege  of  Troy  " ; 
not  so  well  for  Thoreau  to  travesty  it  into  "  When 
I  was  a  shepherd  on  the  plains  of  Assyria."  A 
naive  thing  said  over  again  is  anything  but  naive. 
But  with  every  exception,  there  is  no  writing  com- 
parable with  Thoreau's  in  kind,  that  is  comparable 
with  it  in  degree  where  it  is  best ;  where  it 
gages  itself,  that  is,  from  the  tangled  roots 
dead  leaves  of  a  second-hand  Orientalism,  and  runsv 
limpid  and  smooth  and  broadening  as  it  runs,  a 
mirror  for  whatever  is  grand  and  lovely  in  bo 
worlds. 

George  Sand  says  neatly,  that  "Art  is  not  a 
study  of  positive  reality,"  (actuality  were  the  fitter 
word,)  "  but  a  seeking  after  ideal  truth."  It  would 
be  doing  very  inadequate  justice  t  j  Thoreau  if  we 
left  it  to  be  inferred  that  this  ideal  element  did  not 
exist  in  him,  and  that  too  in  larger  proportion,  if 
less  obtrusive,  than  his  nature-worship.  He  took 
nature  as  the  mountain-path  to  an  ideal  world.  If 
the  path  wind  a  good  deal,  if  he  record  too  faith- 
fully every  trip  over  a  root,  if  he  botanize  some- 
what wearisomely,  he  gives  us  now  and  then  superb 
outlooks  from  some  jutting  crag,  and  brings  us  out 
at  last  into  an  illimitable  ether,  where  the  breath- 
ing is  not  difficult  for  those  who  have  any  true 
touch  of  the  climbing  spirit.  His  shanty-life  was 
a  mere  impossibility,  so  far  as  his  own  conception 


380  THOREA  U 

of  it  goes,  as  an  entire  independency  of  mankind. 
The  tub  of  Diogenes  had  a  sounder  bottom.    Tho- 
reau's   experiment   actually  presupposed   all  that 
^complicated  civilization  which  it  theoretically  ab- 
[  jured.     He  squatted  on  another  man's  land;    he 
j  borrows  an  axe  ;  his  boards,  his  nails,  his  bricks, 
\  his  mortar,  his  books,  his  lamp,  his  fish-hooks,  his 
/  plough,  his-  hoe,  all  turn  state's  evidence  against 
I    him  as  an  accomplice  in  the  sin  of  that  artificial 
^  civilization  which  rendered  it  possible  that  such  a 
person  as  Henry  D.  Thoreau  should  exist  at  all. 
Magnis  tamen  exddit  ausis.     His  aim  was  a  noble 
and  a  useful  one,  in  the  direction  of  "  plain  living 
and  high  thinking."     It  was  a  practical  sermon  on 
Emerson's  text  that  "  things  are  in  the  saddle  and 
ride  mankind,"  an  attempt  to  solve  Carlyle's  prob- 
lem (condensed  from  Johnson)  of  "  lessening  your 
denominator."     His  whole  life  was  a  rebuke  of  the 
waste  and  aimlessness  of  our  American  luxury, 
which  is  an  abject  enslavement  to  tawdry  uphol- 
stery.    He  had  "  fine  translunary  things  "  in  him. 
His  better  style  as  a  writer  is  in  keeping  with  the 
simplicity  and  purity  of  his  life.     We  have  said 
that  his  range  was  narrow,  but  to  be  a  master  is  to 
be  a  master.     He  had  caught  his  English  at  its 
living  source,  among  the  poets  and  prose-writers  of 
its  best  days ;    his   literature   was   extensive   and 
recondite;   his  quotations  are  always  nuggets  of 
the  purest  ore :  there  are  sentences  of  his  as  per- 
fect as  anything  in  the  language,  and  thoughts  as 
clearly  crystallized  ;  his  metaphors  and  images  are 
always  fresh  from  the  soil ;  he  had  watched  Nature 


THOREA  U  881 

like  a  detective  who  is  to  go  upon  the  stand ;  as 
we  read  him,  it  seems  as  if  all-out-of-doors  had  • 
kept  a  diary  and  become  its  own  Montaigne  ;  we 
look  at  the  landscape  as  in  a  Claude  Lorraine 
glass ;  compared  with  his,  all  other  books  of  simi- 
lar aim,  even  White's  "  Selborne,"  seem  dry  as  a 
country  clergyman's  meteorological  journal  in  an 
old  almanac.  He  belongs  with  Donne  and  Browne 
and  Novalis;  if  not  with  the  originally  creative 
men,  with  the  scarcely  smaller  class  who  are  pecu- 
liar, and  whose  leaves  shed  their  invisible  thought- 
seed  like  ferns. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

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